


Cherish the Living

by 27dragons, tisfan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Anal Sex, Dad!Tony Stark, Genre-Typical Violence, M/M, Minor Character Death, Near Death Experiences, Sex, Temporary Amnesia, Wedding, dad!Bucky Barnes, genre-typical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:00:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 49,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23178868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27dragons/pseuds/27dragons, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Tony grew up on stories of the time before the virus, but that’s a world that’s long ago and far away. He now travels a route between the various walled settlements, trading goods and repairs for bread and board, and carrying news from one villa to the next. It’s a dangerous life, but one he’s used to and well-suited for. That is, until a cluster of zombies gets the drop on him.Bucky is a Nomad, one of a band of enhanced humans who have sworn to wipe out all zombies and put an end to the zombie plague -- one at a time, if necessary. When he rescues Tony, he’s just doing his job. Agreeing to escort Tony to the next villa is a bit above-and-beyond, but it’s nice to have company after so long on the road alone. He didn’t expect the trip to forge a bond between the two of them that not nothing -- not even death -- could break.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 481
Kudos: 575
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for 27dragons' and tisfan's Tony Stark Bingos - each chapter fills one square (or an adopted prompt) for each of them:
> 
> Card Number: 3033 (27dragons) & 3023 (tisfan)
> 
> Squares Filled:  
> 27dragons: R3 (Zombies), K4 (Learning to Cook), T3 (Major Injuries), A5 (Wish), R1 (Bedtime Stories), K3 (Vulnerability), R2 (Attacked by a Creature), R4 (Abducted), K5 (Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier), R5 (Adrenaline Rush), S1 (Riri Williams), A3 (Free), S5 (Iron Dad)  
> tisfan: Adopted (Action/Adventure), K4 (Doing Groceries), R1 (Journey), R3 (This Won’t Hurt a Bit), T4 (Games), S4 (Learning to be Loved), T2 (Animal), R5 (Anxiety), A2 (A Wedding and a Funeral), A3 (Free), A5 (Howard Stark), K1 (Epistolary), Adopted (Next Generation)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3033 27dragons R3 zombies  
> 3023 Tisfan adopted action/adventure

Two days out of Providence, Tony’s wagon lost a wheel. He’d known the pins were getting worn, but he’d counted on them holding as far as the next villa, anyway. He crawled back out from under the axle, muttering curses under his breath, and went around to the back, opening up his stores to see if he had any parts that could quickly and easily be rigged as replacements, at least enough to limp him along the road another day or so.

Speed was of the essence. The zombies weren’t strictly nocturnal, but they did seem to move around more at night, and of course, it was harder to see them coming when it was dark. Tony wanted to be mounted up in the driver’s seat before nightfall, where he could keep a hand on the control for his perimeter defenses.

He sorted through his metal gear and tried not to think about how much of a bitch it would be to get the wheel into place and hold it steady enough to put the pin in. One insurmountable problem at a time, he told himself.

That was Tony’s world, and had been for his whole life. He could remember his father telling stories about Before. Had crept up to the outskirts of the old, crumbling cities to see their buildings reaching for the sky. Tony would never know what it was like to see them lit and bustling with people; now, they were wastelands that only the most foolhardy or desperate dared enter.

Howard had lived in one, had been an inventor and a business mogul, rich beyond telling, if Tony were to believe the stories. Of course, all the wealth in the world hadn’t meant shit once the plague had reached American borders.

He found a strip of wire; it was too light for the job, but doubled over on itself a few times and twisted, it should be just about right. Far from perfect, and he wouldn’t be able to move at more than a walk, but it would be better than trying to backpack all his gear to the villa.

He looked around quickly to make sure there was nothing coming, then picked up a mallet and went to work. It would be easier and faster with a full forge -- but then, if he had a forge, he could just build a new pin to the exact specifications.

The donkey pulling Tony’s wagon was a replacement -- Tony’s horse, Dummy, had thrown a shoe and gone lame, and though Tony could replace the shoe easily, Dummy had needed to rest the leg. So Tony had traded for the donkey and boarding for Dummy, promising to pick the horse back up the next time he passed through Providence.

The donkey’s name was Dammit, a name he had earned in full. While Tony was working on the wagon, Dammit managed to tangle his leads around a bush, dragged the whole scraggly-assed plant out of the ground and started eating something probably not very good for him and befouling his bit at the same time. The animal’s ears flicked, then flicked again before he returned to the joy of eating what might, in fact, be _poison ivy_ , god Dammit.

Tony groaned. “You are worse than useless,” he told the donkey. A few last drops of the mallet, and then Tony crawled back under the wagon to check the fit of the makeshift pin.

Dammit made a sound, that hideous ugly braying noise that was a donkey’s trademark. So much less pleasant to the ears than a horse’s nickering. The bushes rustled and the donkey brayed again. A thump, and then--

Silence would have been preferable.

What Tony heard was chewing. And not just chewing but _rending_.

Oversized teeth tearing flesh. Clawed, grotesque hands ripping off skin. 

The poor, stupid animal hadn’t even had time to scream.

Tony didn’t bother trying to go still -- zombies worked by scent as much as by sound or sight. He squirmed around, counting bodies. How many of them were there? Just how _fucked_ was he? He left the pin in the dirt; it was useless. The mallet was within reach, though, if Tony could manage to get to his feet before the zombies grabbed him. He pushed up onto his elbows, planning his path and actions -- there would be no do-overs once he emerged from under cover.

They were distracted by the donkey. There weren’t that many humans who ventured outside the walled villas and other settlements, but the zombies were still around, so they must eat _something_. Deer, perhaps. A donkey was a nice little treat, maybe.

No one had done terribly much studying of zombies as a culture, or if they did, they hadn’t lived long enough to talk about it. Whether the creatures clung to scraps of human intelligence or operated solely on instinct. Whether they formed group bonds. No one knew.

What everyone did know was that they were _relentless_. Once they decided you were food, you couldn’t threaten them, you couldn’t hurt them enough to make them back down. You could either kill them, or you died. If you died, it was possible -- depending on how much of you they ate -- you might join their ranks. If you were bitten, you would definitely become one.

There were-- four. One was so emaciated that Tony could see its bones through the thin, papery skin. Those were the hardest to kill. All but reanimated skeletons, they couldn’t be slowed down by blood loss or traumatized by damage to internal organs.

Four wasn’t impossible odds, but it wasn’t good, either.

If Tony had been on the wagon seat, he could have dispatched them all with the throw of a lever -- electrocution seemed to damage whatever mechanism allowed their dead tissue to move. But he wasn’t on the wagon seat, and the only path up there was through the zombies. So.

Hammer.

Aim for the teeth first, he reminded himself. If they couldn’t bite, then it would be harder for them to infect him. He checked their positions again -- donkey must be delicious; they hadn’t moved much -- braced, and then rolled out from under the wagon and snatched up the mallet.

He swung hard at the closest, breaking its jaw and caving in the side of its skull before dancing back out of the range of those ragged claws.

It screamed, breathless -- of course, it didn’t have lungs as such -- but it did make some sort of noise, terrifying and reedy and angry. There wasn’t much left to its muddy eyeballs, sunk in with heavy cataracts. But Tony could see rage, hunger. Or maybe he was just projecting. There was nothing left of humanity in there, no matter what or who it had been before.

They were smarter than he might have thought; two were flanking him, circling to either side. He wasn’t quite sure where the fourth one had got to, but he was getting the sinking suspicion it might be behind him.

He swung a wide circle with his mallet. Not that the zombies would shrink back from it. They didn’t seem to have any fear or caution left in them. Nothing but hunger. But he connected with grasping hands, shattering thin bones so it would be harder for them to claw at him.

“Come on, you bastards,” he growled. “Try me.”

One leaped, claws extended, mouth open, body too far gone to have anything left to moan or cry. Unstoppable hunger, and that was all. They smelled _terrible_ up close, almost enough to gag him, even as terrified as he was. At least these were pretty old. Old ones were stronger, but brittle. Tony shattered its skull with a swing of the mallet and it crumpled to the ground, unmoving.

Tony shifted around, hoping to put the wagon at his back, though that would only be useful for so long. He considered the options for a fraction of a second, then jumped toward the next. No need for anything fancy. No point. They wouldn’t react, either to a threat or damage. They would die, or they would eat.

The blow landed, but glancing, and the zombie tried to grab it, claws raking a gash up Tony’s arm, the pain electric and instant. _It’s not a bite, not a bite, the virus only spreads by bite._ Despite that, the sight of his own blood started a panicky rabbit fear in his chest. He was going to die, or he was going to be turned. The creature wrenched the mallet away from him and lunged, snapping, for his throat.

Tony twisted back out of the way, nearly colliding with one of the others. Fuck, _fuck_ , he was surrounded, he was going to _die_. He swung again, wildly.

The zombies crowded him, shoved, grasped, snapped--

Tony went down, instinctively covering his head, for all the good that would do--

**BOOM!**

The weight of the creature on him went flying, and there was something -- someone -- else in the midst of the struggle. Dressed in black, holding a heavy shotgun in one hand and wielding a baton with the other. “Stay down,” the man said, gruff, and then took up a position practically standing over Tony. 

Another blast with the shotgun knocked the zombie over, and a follow up with the baton, which delivered an electrical charge to the creature, dispatched it.

A Nomad, Tony realized. He’d thought they were a myth, or at least long since gone.

What Tony did, traveling from villa to villa, was dangerous. He had to be smart and quick-thinking and canny to avoid zombies between the walled settlements.

What Nomads did was downright _insane_ , actively _seeking out_ the zombies to destroy them.

The Nomad was practically covered in battle-armor, black, with brown buckles and holsters that carried weapons and bullets, bandages and grenades. He wore a mask over his face, and high-tech tactical goggles that made him look vaguely insectoid. His hair was long, raggedly cut, and only slightly less black than his outfit.

He grabbed the last zombie by the throat, squeezing.

That arm was not clad in black armor, but was bare and shiny and metal, adorned with a red star on the shoulder. The zombie bit, fruitlessly, at that arm, clawed at it, but couldn’t escape.

With a wrench, the man closed those metal fingers and the zombie’s head came away from the neck.

“Are there more?” the Nomad demanded, pivoting in position over Tony’s body, providing protection.

“I...” Tony looked around as he climbed to his feet. “I don’t think so.” Sometimes zombies traveled in groups, sometimes they wandered solo, but all of them within earshot would turn toward any sound that might indicate food. “I, uh. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” the man said. “Nomad Barnes, at your service. We can’t stay here, out in the open like this. I’ve been tracking a swarm about six hours run to the east. They will have heard the noise. Anything in your wagon that’s important enough to risk it? Food, weapons? Medical supplies?”

“What? I can’t just abandon it, it’s everything I’ve--” Tony gritted his teeth. He hadn’t heard of a swarm for _years_. Those only happened when a large number of people succumbed to the virus in a short time. If there was a swarm nearby now, then one of the villas must have fallen. If the swarm was within a day’s travel, as Barnes said, then he needed to move fast. He’d started from scratch before; he’d do it again if he had to. “Okay. I’ve. I’ve got some food and some medicine. And if I can have ten minutes to decouple it, I’ve got an electrified camp perimeter.”

“Start packing,” Barnes said. He dropped something at Tony’s feet -- a couple of empty canvas sacks. “I can carry loads up to six hundred pounds, but I prefer not to. I’m gonna run a quick sweep, and see if I can spot the swarm.” He pulled a second black baton. “This is a charge stick. Ten jolts before it needs recharging, and keep your hand on the handle or you’ll kill yourself. Secure anything that we can’t carry over rough terrain. The swarm probably doesn’t want to eat your wagon, and we can come back for it in a week or so.”

Tony nodded. His hand shook a little as he took the charge stick, but that was probably the adrenaline. He tucked the stick in his belt and climbed into the back of the wagon with the bags to start separating the utterly essential from the useful from the trivial. He had a pack of his own that he could fill, too, in case he was never able to come back for the wagon.

A small part of him wanted to beg Barnes not to leave him alone again, but that was foolishness. Still, he couldn’t help asking, “Will you be back before sundown?”

Barnes glanced up at the sky. “I wouldn’t stick around if I ain’t. No more than two hours. If I’m not back by then, you grab the lightest bag and you fuckin’ run. It’s about three days walk to the next villa with a wall.”

“Yeah, I know.” Tony had been traveling this route -- calling it a road seemed too generous -- for years. Though he might have better luck just setting up his camp perimeter and waiting it out, depending on the size of the swarm. “Rough idea how many there are?”

“Hundreds,” Barnes said. “Maybe a thousand. New Albany fell. The ones that didn’t survive are fresh. And hungry.”

“Shit. _Shit_.” Tony’d had friends in New Albany. “How the-- No, never mind, news later. Packing and scouting now. Right.” He reached for the box that had his food in it, started emptying the protein bars into one of the sacks. “You need food?”

“Not yet,” Barnes said. He shifted a little, then raised a hand to the strap on the side of his combat mask, pulling off the goggles. His forehead was dirty, the face underneath clear and pale, with deep blue-grey eyes and high cheekbones. He was, quite bluntly, gorgeous. “Give me your hand.”

Confused, Tony held out his hand. “My name’s Tony, by the way.”

Barnes bent his head over Tony’s hand and-- pressed a kiss into his palm. It was odd, strange, almost terrifying. Someone’s _mouth_ , so close, someone who was practically a stranger.. _._ The zombie virus was transmittable for most of a day before the victim succumbed; a stranger’s mouth and teeth were nothing but danger. But Barnes didn’t bite, or even hold him when Tony jerked back instinctively. “You can trust me,” he said. “Nomads have a code. Stop the dead. Cherish the living. I’ll be back.”

“I, uh--” Tony was stammering to thin air, Barnes having all but melted. Tony’s hand felt warm in the center, where Barnes had kissed it, but not like an infection. Warm like a fire on a cold night. Tony rubbed at it with his other hand, absently watching the path where Barnes had stood.

After what was probably entirely too long, he jerked back into motion and resumed packing the bags. Food and medicine in one, the one that would be the last to be abandoned if they had to run. Weapons in the next. Tony took his time detaching the perimeter wires from the wagon’s sides and rolling it all carefully into that bag, along with its power unit. Tony’s tools and some of the lighter gear and tradegoods in a third. A change of clothes.

He left the food he’d packed for Dammit, the scrap metal, the few luxury tradegoods. He covered it all with tarps and blankets, tied it down as best he could to keep weather and living scavengers out.

Then he strapped his weapons on, the specialized ones he’d built for himself, and covered them with a thick leather jacket. He climbed up onto the wagon’s seat -- it was the best vantage point he could get to, short of climbing a tree -- and waited, shockstick held lightly in one hand, thumb on the trigger.

Good to his word, Barnes was back just shy of two hours later. “I set up some traps. It’ll slow them down, maybe take some of them out. It won’t be enough to stop all of them. If I--” He sputtered to a stop, eyes going wide and he seemed to lose his train of thought entirely, swaying on his feet.

“Barnes?” Tony said, half-rising. “You okay?”

Barnes shook his head, then seemed to snap back. “Recovering,” he said. “Head trauma. Short term memory loss, disorientation. Occasional dizziness.” Well, that was blunt, Tony thought, but probably useful. Part of the Nomad code, maybe. Tony not knowing that Barnes was injured could be dangerous for both of them.

“Okay,” he said. “You sure you should be out here?” Dumb question; Barnes was _here_ , whether he should be or not. “Never mind. You ready to travel, or you need a minute?”

“I’m functional,” Barnes said. “This way, there’s a fort up that hill there. We can wait it out. Stay behind me, and do not fall behind. There are traps, so don’t stray off the path. You can swim? We’re gonna cross a river, throws off the scent.”

Tony shouldered his pack, settled it and tied it into place. “I can swim,” he agreed. He looked where Barnes was pointing. The hill was on the far side of the ruined wasteland that Tony had been skirting the perimeter of, which had probably once been a small town, Before. The hill was a jagged mound, and the fort was barely visible, just a hint of a wall on the back side of the hill. It was a pretty big hill, and that was after having to walk through the ruins. But it was a _Nomad_ telling him that this was their best course. “...Right. Okay. Stay on the path, stay behind you, don’t fall back. Got it.”

“We’ll be okay,” Barnes said it like an oath. “I’ll protect you.”

He shouldered the other packs like they weighed practically nothing, settling them over his broad back, checking to make sure his weapons were clear, and then turned, marching into the wastes. There were rusty bits of cars and shattered buildings, but the trees were coming back in. It did not make for very easy travel. Obstacles and presumably traps to go around, and the sightlines weren’t good. The path took them through a huge, empty building-- the front had enormous letters that read ART and a W or M that was on the ground. 

That place was nerve-wracking. It had been thoroughly picked over by survivors of the first round of the plague, but there were shelves and broken furniture and empty displays that anyone -- or anything -- could have been hiding behind.

Barnes had his goggles back on and was sweeping the building from one side to the other. Tony wasn’t sure what kind of visual enhancements that had. Thermographics wouldn’t do any good; the dead didn’t give off body heat.

He wondered if later, when they were safe and out of danger, Barnes would let him look at them.

Not far past the ART the ground got very rocky and sloped down to a narrow gorge. "There used to be a bridge," Barnes said, like he was apologizing. "It's pretty steep here."

“I can keep up,” Tony promised. He checked the security of his pack and the placement of his weapons.

Barnes led the way, moving slow but steady and offering Tony a hand from time to time when the ground was particularly treacherous. At the edge of the river, Barnes took off his mask and goggles, scrubbed his face and then took a long drink. "Water's clean here, and cold." 

There were some places where the water was almost as dangerous as the zombies.

Tony drank, and took a moment to fish out his filtered canteens and refill them. He considered the rush of the current, deceptively calm on the surface. “I have some rope,” he offered.

"Yeah, not a bad idea. The current is pretty strong. This is a shallow crossing, but there's a span of at least thirty feet where your feet won't touch. How long is your rope?"

Tony took the bag from Barnes that it was in and fished it out. “Just short of a hundred feet.” It was braided nylon, left from Before, scuffed and stained but still in good condition.

"Okay," Barnes said, tying a quick harness around Tony's chest. "We'll go to the drop off together. You stay there and I'll swim across first, and when I'm steady, you can come." He knotted the bags in at the end and gave Tony a short knife. "If you need to, cut the rope. Supplies can be replaced."

“Yeah, I know.” Tony tucked the knife in his belt next to the charge stick. “But I sure hope we don’t have to.”

The water was cold and it seeped into his clothes with icy fingers. The river bed was rock, slippery with algae. By the time he was waist deep in it, Tony was shivering constantly.

"Used to swim here, when I was a boy," Barnes said. "Before the plague. In the summer." 

Tony squinted at Barnes. “No way are you old enough to remember before the plague.”

"Still got my looks, if not my arm. Or my liver. About half the Nomads are Project Rebirth, or don't they still tell stories about us in the villas?"

“Stories, sure,” Tony said. “Lots of stories. I thought that’s all they were. I’ve never heard of Project Rebirth.”

"Assuming we live long enough to get bored, I'll tell you about it," Barnes offered. "Alright, this is as steady as we're going to get. Brace yourself."

Barnes took a few more steps, pushing through the water and then swam. Powerful strokes, cutting clean through the river. 

Tony watched, his teeth chattering, until Barnes reached the far side of the dropoff. Once Barnes had stood up and nodded to Tony, he braced himself, trying not to think about it too much, and dove into the water. He was a decent swimmer, but he could still feel the rope tugging as the current dragged him off-course. More pulling as Barnes dragged him back toward center.

“I feel like a fishing lure,” he complained as he staggered up onto the bank beside Barnes and turned to help pull in the packs.

You look like a good catch," Barnes teased. He eyed the sky. "We're going to be walking in the dark. Shit. Can't be helped."

Tony glanced at the level of the sun, and then back along the path. “How visible are we going to be from--” He waved back the way they’d come. “I can rig a hooded lantern if that would help.”

"Yeah," Barnes said. "Do that. Catch your breath. We're close. It'd be a fucking shame to die _now_."

Tony found the bag with his tools in it and then dug up an oil lantern. He was still shivering from the cold of the water, so it took him a few tries to get the pieces put together properly, but finally he had it. “Any movement?”

“The river’ll slow ‘em down a lot, unless they pull a _Leiningen Versus the Ants_ piece of bullshit,” Barnes said. He pulled out a pair of binocs, scanning the land behind them.

Tony found his firestarter and flicked it to life. It probably wouldn’t be noticeable in the dying rays of the sun, not to someone who wasn’t actively looking for it. He lit the lantern -- thank all the gods that never were for the waterproof case he’d picked up a couple of stops ago -- and fitted the hood over it. “Okay, that’s as good as we’re going to get.”

Barnes offered his hand. “Don’t want to lose you,” he said, twining their fingers together, still in the lead, letting Tony hold up the lamp to show the path.

It was a little odd, but the path was far from even, so it turned out to be practical, as Barnes helped him over the rough spots and kept him from stumbling a few times. Tony glanced up at the sky, the stars emerging from the dusky velvet. “How much farther?”

“Almost,” Barnes said, then the trees gave way to a flat, level area, ruthlessly bare. “Stop here,” he said. “The whole place has motion lights and auto defenses. Solar powered, so thank Christ for global warming, am I right? Stand here, I’ll go let us in.” Barnes did a few hops, jumps, and steps -- it looked like the ground contained pressure sensors -- but he finally made it to the walls and tapped a code into the wall, a small, depressed panel about halfway up. A door, thick and metal, slid down into the ground. 

“You can come across now.”

Tony glanced behind him, then hurried across the open space until he was pressed up against the wall again. “I’m going to guess this was built after the plague had arrived,” he said. “But not too much after.”

“It was remodeled,” Barnes said. “Used to be a nuclear war bunker. Welcome. The Nomads have a bunch of these places scattered around. I was planning to settle here for a few months, hunt. The swarm changed my mind.” He thumbed a panel inside the door and it rose up behind them, leaving them in almost total darkness, cut only by Tony’s lamp. Barnes flipped a switch once the door locked. Electric lights -- rare, not totally unheard of, but a luxury. Most places didn’t have enough electric to waste it on things like light and heat. Not when there were cheaper alternatives, like fire.

“This is the gateroom.” Barnes eyed Tony for a moment. “Okay, strip.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Tony took half a step back and promptly bounced off the door.

“This is a safe place,” Barnes said. “As long as you’re not infected. And we all know that people lie-- I need to make sure you haven’t been bitten. Strip.”

Barnes wasn’t wrong about the need for caution. There were several villas along Tony’s route that quarantined those coming in for twenty-four hours before allowing them into the town, and he’d never blamed them for that.

He tugged on the damp rope and the buckles for his pack. “Okay. Okay. Give me a minute, here, this stuff is all wet and I don’t want to cut it loose if I don’t have to.”

Barnes watched him, without any particular focus, but he had his hand on his shockstick the whole time, too. “Arms up, turn around slow.” Barnes coughed once, then, “Show me the bottoms of your feet. All right. No bite marks.” He tossed Tony a packet from his own bag, wrapped in a sealed plastic bag. Clean, dry clothes. Soft, warm pants and a tee. Old, smelling of preservatives. Machine made.

“Oh, I could kiss you for this.” Tony scrambled into the clothes, scrubbing the last of the chill from the river off his arms. He looked around curiously. “So... what next? I have food to share. I think there’s enough to share. I can restock, next villa.”

Barnes was peeling out of his own clothes, tactical gear and wet pants, sodden boots. “Set up perimeter defenses, then eat, sleep. And wait. Can’t outrun a swarm, gotta wait ‘til they go by. After, see what’s left of your stuff. I can escort you to the villa, if you want.” He tipped his chin to pull his shirt off over his head, then glanced at Tony. “You’re the first live person I’ve seen in almost a year now.”

Wow. That was a lot of lonely, even for a Nomad. “Company would be nice,” Tony said. “And protection. Though once the swarm’s gone by...” He shrugged. “Not likely to be much following in its wake. But you never know. Plus, you know. Company. Usually the road is pretty quiet, between villas. And I like to talk.”

“Yeah, I-- I could do that,” Barnes said. “You travel around a lot? That’s brave.”

Tony shrugged. “Maybe, I guess. Never really thought about it. If I stay in one place, I run out of things to fix and start tinkering instead, and everyone gets tired of me. So I travel a route, and by the time I get to a town again, they’re happy to see me.”

“Huh,” Barnes said. “Used to know a tinkerer, long time ago. He was a good friend.” Barnes tugged a second pair of pants over bare legs, giving Tony ample opportunity to notice that there were no bite marks on him, either. Lots of scars, but they were old. No fresh wounds that could be a sign of infection. “Top floor to these things are always the same. Underneath, it’s whatever the builders felt like doing. We’ll hit Ops first, get the perimeter set up. What sort of things do you like to tinker with?”

“Anything, really,” Tony said. “Mechanics. Anything that hooks up to electric, I’m pretty good with. I like to make new things.”

“New things,” Barnes mused, leading the way deeper into the fort. The floor was cold under bare feet, but the ambient air wasn’t too bad. Now that Tony was dry. “Haven’t seen a _new thing_ in ages.” He flicked a couple of switches, bringing up more lights. Now that they were indoors, in a place with no windows, Barnes seemed to relish the light, soaking it up. 

Inside the Ops room, a map was hung on one wall, showing the nearby lands, settlements, zombie sightings. The other was filled with screens, showing the outside of the building. 

A moment later, something moved on the camera.

Something else. More… and more.

The plague-ridden creatures crossed the open ground, dragging their arms as they loped like animals. Huge, snarl-ridden mouths in rotting faces. They were freshly dead, still recognizable as human, or having been human once.

Tony was terrified that he might recognize one of them, even deformed as they were, and yet entirely unable to look away. “Dear gods,” he breathed. “So _many_ of them.”

“Yeah,” Barnes said. “We’re… gonna be stuck here for a bit. Break out the ration bars, and we’ll get fueled up while we see if the swarm just… keeps swarming. We could get lucky. Happens. Sometimes. Get some sleep. Then see what we’ve got to work with in terms of supplies, right?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, still watching the monitors. “Yeah. Sleep.”

* * *

Bucky moved, heavier than normal, making sure Tony _tony by the way_ saw him. He’d learned the hard way that people did not react well to being startled in high stress environments. Tony was not a Nomad, he was baseline human. He couldn’t hear Bucky’s breathing, or feel the pressure in the air.

Not sneaking up on someone. It was a workable solution. Especially indoors like this. They were _probably_ safe. No reason to scare anyone.

“I’m going to scrounge,” Bucky suggested. “Bedrolls, see what food might have been left. Fort diary. Do you want to stay and keep an eye on our guests, or come with me?” 

Tony was exhibiting some signs of shock, anxiety, fear. These were normal, Bucky reminded himself. He just needed to treat Tony with extra consideration. Tony wasn’t a Nomad, couldn’t go for days without rest, couldn’t run for hours, and certainly couldn’t fight after doing either of those things.

Smart, though. Efficient. 

Asked a lot of questions. 

Bucky wasn’t sure what to do with those. Questions. Tony talked a lot, too. Filling the space in the air with words.

It was… nice, Bucky decided.

“I, uh.” Tony’s body turned toward Bucky, but his eyes stayed fixed on the monitors until the very last second. “I should probably come with you. Seems like a bad idea for us to be separated until we’re, you know. Sure we’re alone in here.” He darted another glance toward the monitors.

“The system will let us know if they start breaching the defenses,” Bucky said. He put his hand on Tony’s wrist. It felt nice. _C-tactile afferents_. Reduces cortisol output. Induces more regular heartbeat, calming influence. “And I will feel better, if I am not alone.”

Tony glanced down at where Bucky was touching him, then flicked his eyes up at Bucky’s face. “ _You’ll_ feel better. Sure. Yeah, I’ll come with. I just...” He turned his back on the monitors with obvious effort. “I’ve never seen so _many_.”

“They do not get easier to see, even so many,” Bucky said. “It’s hard to forget they were once just like us. People. And it’s hard to remember that you cannot reach them. You always, always want to try.”

He’d killed any number of them, friends as well as strangers. The people they had once been deserved better. They deserved to be remembered as humans. 

“Yeah,” Tony said heavily. He scooped up his pack and slung it over his shoulders, though he didn’t bother fastening the straps that tied it down. “Come on, let’s go see what we can find.”

“I think I’ve been here before,” Bucky said, touching the walls with his cyber hand, trying to remember. The problem with being as old as he was, his memory wasn’t always the best. Too many headwounds, Sam would say. He hoped Sam was still alive. The battle at New Albany had been brutal. “The layouts are very similar at any rate. The infected aren’t clever enough to figure it out. If the fort should be overrun, each of these--” he indicated a groove in the floor “-- can be shut and sealed. The panel is here, just to the side, about chest high on a running man.”

Tony paused, gravely examining the panel and the doors. “Do we know if they’re in good working order?”

“I don’t really want to test one while we’re walking through. Unsealing is a bitch. But if you want to test one, we’ll find a corridor we’re not going to be using.” Two doors down gave them another access hall and-- “Here, supplies.” The language was old. Pictograms, too, in case people stopped knowing how to read. Or didn’t speak English. Nomad Command was as thorough as it could be. The pictogram on the door showed grapes, a bottle, a bedroll.

Tony eyed it briefly, then nodded. “Got it. Let’s see what’s left that’s useable.”

Bedrolls, blankets, even pillows. That would be nice. Several sealed bottles of caplets. Vitamins, pain killers, antibiotics. Some of it was old, but probably still effective. 

“Someone’s been here,” Bucky said. “Not too long ago. The Nomads restock these forts annually. There’s no food.”

Tony grunted. “I’ve got some. Enough to last a few days, anyway. Rat bars, mostly.” He reached past Bucky, arm brushing against Bucky’s, to snare a bottle of vitamins. “These aren’t a bad idea. And if we don’t use them all, we can take the rest of the bottle to town with us for barter.”

Bucky didn’t quite restrain a shudder. Ration bars were efficient but… somewhat less than tasty. They made eating just another task to accomplish.

Bucky added a few things to his pack. Another fire-starter, because he was always losing his, or running out of fuel, or using the fuel to blow something up. He was versatile. But it did mean he’d started a number of campfires recently by rubbings sticks together, which was a pain in the ass.

The next room down--

“Oh, god,” Bucky said, looking at it in wonder. “A cistern.” Collecting water from the rooftops and drainage systems, the cistern usually meant-- “There’s a bath, somewhere.”

Tony shivered and rubbed at his arms, even though they were fully dry by now. “I just had a bath.”

“A _heated_ bath, without having to run buckets,” Bucky said. He remembered, sometimes, the old days, when running hot and cold water was considered part of everyday life, not a luxury. When he used to complain that Ma wanted him to wash behind his ears. 

He took a step, then--

_\--four, five, six, he pushed the children ahead, down the tunnel. Only the oldest was stooped, the rest of them small enough to walk upright. Bucky was in the back, guns out. The noise inside the tunnel was deafening--_

“Barnes?” Tony had his hands carefully out to the sides, but he was edging into Bucky’s line of sight. “You okay, there?”

“Head trauma,” Bucky said, again. “I-- I’m not functioning at peak efficiency.” What had happened, he wondered. Head trauma, but _when_? He couldn’t remember. He was so old, and his memory sometimes blurred. New Albany, the battle of New Albany, and-- “Do people keep track of years anymore? Do you know what year it is?”

“Oh, sure,” Tony said. “Planning the New Year party gives us something to do when we’re holed up behind walls in the winter. It’s thirty-eight years since the Outbreak. Be thirty-nine in a couple months.”

Mouthy little spitfire, Bucky thought. He grinned. All right, then. “Trying to remember when I hit my head,” Bucky said. “I… was it a long time ago, or just. Summer. I think it was summer.”

“Head wounds can take a while to heal,” Tony said, consolingly. “Brains are weird. Come on, let’s grab some bedrolls and stuff and find a secure spot to bunk down, and then see if we can locate this bath of yours.”

Bucky nodded. “I feel. Strange, about it. Having forgotten. Whatever it is, and I-- can’t remember. I think it might have been important.” He scooped up the bedrolls. If there was a cistern and a bath, some of the rooms might be steam heated. Comfortable, if they could get the works started. Maybe not tonight, though. Bucky was running on willpower alone, and Tony, probably not much better. Adrenaline and anxiety. Rest would do them both good.

A few more halls down was the bunk room, several wooden frames for throwing a pallet on. Storage boxes for clothes. A whole rack of boots in various sizes.

“Oh, _boots_ ,” Tony said. He trailed his fingers over the leather. “Think if I do some upkeep maintenance on your solar system, it’d be worth a pair of boots?”

“They’re here to be used,” Bucky said, reasonably. “But maintenance is always good. For the next person who needs a safe space.”

He checked the standing closet.

One pallet. 

And something that had once been a pallet but was now just a pile of fluff and a rather smug looking mother cat with a single, fat kitten.

Huh.

“Hello there,” Bucky said, offering a finger. “You here as a mouser, or a free-loader?”

Tony came over to look over Bucky’s shoulder. Or, well, around Bucky’s elbow, as Tony wasn’t nearly as tall as Bucky. “Oh! Must be a mouser,” he reasoned. “There’s no food for her to be eating.”

“And there’s probably mice,” Bucky said. Mice had been around as long as there had been men and grain storage. “One bed.” He lifted the mattress out of its slot. The mother cat gave him a dubious look, but when he didn’t drop it, went back to giving the kitten a totally unappreciated bath.

Tony eyed it measuringly. “I’ve split smaller billets with less pleasant company. That is, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Bucky said. He’d slept on bare rock, in hammocks, in trees, and with at least four other people in the same tent because that was all they had. He found himself shy, without a lot to say. _Pleasant company._ By implication only, of course.

“Great.” Tony stepped back and waved toward the pallet frames. “Let’s get us set up, and then we can find that bath.” He paused. “They’ll probably have actual soap,” he mused. “I wonder if there’s a razor supply.”

“You and Natasha would get along,” Bucky said. “On the run from hordes of zombies and she can’t sleep if she hasn’t shaved her legs.”

Tony chuckled. “Nomads must live the good life,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anyone shaving their _legs_ before. That’s a lot of area to cover.”

“We do well enough,” Bucky said. “Some villas offer a bounty on infected, or pay a tribute to clear out troublesome nests. It’s dangerous, even for us, but no one else can do it. We have enough.”

Tony sobered at that. “I didn’t mean to suggest it wasn’t well-earned.”

Bucky laid the pallet down on the bed and unrolled the blankets, making a nice, comfortable nest. “That one’s yours,” he told the cat. “Leave ours alone.” He glanced at Tony, who was wearing a few days’ worth of beard. Most men did. And he found himself wondering what that skin would feel like, freshly peeled.

Nat’s legs had always felt amazingly soft, after she’d shaved. But that was a long time ago. He wondered if she was still alive.

“Well, let’s go see if we can find you a razor.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3033 27dragons K4 (Learning to Cook)  
> 3023 Tisfan K4 (Doing Groceries)

It had taken three days for the bulk of the zombie swarm to pass the fortress. Most of them never came anywhere near it. A few stumbled across the borders and triggered the protections, but despite sometimes traveling in packs, zombies weren’t herd creatures -- they were neither frightened nor enraged by their comrades’ deaths. They just kept shambling along, looking for food.

Tony had spent a big chunk of that time watching them on the monitors, fascinated and repulsed. Occasionally, he’d peel off and go explore the fortress, checking the relays for the solar panels and repairing wiring that was getting old and worn. He replaced some door hinges, rebuilt one pallet frame that had broken, improved the shelving in the storeroom. Anything to think about _anything_ that wasn’t the swarm outside the walls.

Barnes had proved himself a good companion, able to follow instructions enough to help with the upgrades, easygoing, strong -- he held up an entire console at one point while Tony squirmed around under it to get to the loose panel. And although he had to be gently prodded to talk about himself, he was a good listener, paying attention, asking relevant questions, nodding at all the right times.

That morning, somewhat after they’d glumly forced themselves to eat more rat bars, Barnes had come back to the room, slightly bouncier. “Want to go shopping?”

Tony blinked at him. “...Shopping,” he repeated. He twisted around, exaggeratedly examining the windowless walls. “Is there a market in the basement?”

“No, but I did a wide sweep. There’s a straggler or two, but they’ve moved on. We’re probably safe enough to go out and forage.”

Tony tapped at his chest, considering. “How far to the next town?”

“Three days, assuming the swarm doesn’t change direction and head for it,” Barnes said. “I think I heard shelling last night, though. Someone’s luring them away from the settlement.”

Privately, Tony thought Barnes was indulging in wishful thinking. The walls of the fortress were far too thick to hear even sizeable explosions unless they were right up near the boundaries. Aloud, he mused, “There’s definitely not enough rat bars to last us three more days. So I guess we’ll need to forage at some point. Might as well do it now, before we set out.” He reached for his new boots and started pulling them on. “I need to go outside, anyway, to take a look at the solar panels.”

“Little hunting, little gathering. Then cooking, storage. We’ll be all right,” Barnes said. “This area used to be sparsely populated, back in the day. Farmers, mostly. Might be some gardens gone wild, stray cows, that sort of thing. Rabbits, if nothing else. There’s always rabbits. Fish. I can set down a few fish traps, pick ‘em up on the way back.”

Tony hummed. “I’m not good at that sort of thing,” he admitted. “I’ve done a little fishing, and I can set a snare, but...” He shrugged. “Maybe you should do the shopping, and I’ll stand guard.”

“And how will you improve if you don’t practice?” Barnes wondered. He shifted through his armor, vest and the tactical pants, pulling the heavier gear on over his clothes. Barnes had lamented that there wasn’t any additional armor in the fort, either, but it was probably just as well. Refitting armor, even pieces like what Barnes wore, took time, and Tony wasn’t nearly as tall as the Nomad.

“Can’t learn it all,” Tony said philosophically. He emptied out his pack so he’d have a place to put scavenged foods, tucked his toolkit into the front pouch, and shrugged it on. “I trade my skills for food.”

“Come on, Mr. Mechanic, maybe you can build a better mousetrap,” Barnes said, holstering his gun and sliding his knives into their sheaths. 

Tony tucked his own weapons into their places and followed Barnes back through the long, heavy corridors.

The forest they’d come through on their way in was somewhat worse for wear; it wasn’t so much that the zombies had destroyed things. That would have involved some sort of purpose. They’d just walked over it, careless, heedless. Trees showed signs of being bumped so often their bark was peeling off, the grass was stamped flat. When they got to the river, Barnes turned them upstream, to areas that were less blighted by the swarm’s passage. 

“So what are we looking for, oh mighty hunter?” When Tony fished -- which wasn’t often -- he mostly just looked for a defensible spot close to some water. He’d set snares a few times, but then hadn’t known what to do with whatever he’d caught, so mostly he only did that close to towns, when he might be able to trade the meat.

“I’ll set up a corral here, net off the-- see how the river goes around that little nook? Fish will swim in one side, and the current mostly forces them downstream. If we set a net right there, everything that comes in through the eddy will be forced into our net.”

Tony narrowed his eyes, considering the current. “Yeah, okay, I see it. That’s a lot of fish, though, isn’t it?”

“A few,” Barnes agreed. “Being in the trap won’t hurt them, we’ll take a few of the largest, let the rest go. If we had more time, we could smoke them, or dry them, and keep more, but that takes almost a week. And I think you’d rather be on your way.”

“There are people counting on me,” Tony agreed, “who are probably already worried that I’m late.” Not that it hadn’t been almost pleasant, puttering around the fortress, being able to sleep, knowing he was safe. And warm, as he rarely was this time of year, but Barnes put out heat like a furnace. If it hadn’t been for the zombie swarm, it would have been a nice little break.

“I will make sure you get to them,” Barnes promised. He finished stringing the net, which had caught its first fish before he even secured the anchoring line. “Come, meals are not made of meat alone. How’s your plant lore?” Barnes foraged as they walked, stripping tall plants of leaves, uprooting a handful of scraggly, wild carrots. Tony found it easier to just hold out the bag for him as they went.

“I know which berries not to pick,” Tony said, “and I can recognize a few crops gone wild.” Most plants could be eaten raw, at least. There hadn’t been much along his established routes, though, and it would have been folly to stray too far off the path.

Barnes pointed things out as they went, stopping in a thick patch of fragrant grasses. “Oh, garlic,” he said, and pulled up a handful, showing the thick white bulbs underneath.

“Is that what it looks like?” Tony said. He’d eaten garlic before, but never seen the plant. He memorized its shape and looked around. There was another a few steps away. It took a few tries to get it out of the ground -- the plant stems kept snapping -- but then he caught the trick of it, and there was a heavy bulb in his hand. “Garlic is great.”

“As the French discovered, many centuries ago, humans will eat almost anything if it’s cooked with enough garlic. And butter, preferably, but it’s a little tricky to milk a wild cow.”

“Oil,” Tony returned. “One of the towns on my route has an oil press. I’ve fixed it a couple of times.”

Deeper into the wooded area, they turned up a patch of a root vegetable; turnips, maybe. “Or really large radishes, not sure,” Barnes said, then put a hand on Tony’s chest. “Don’t move, be very still and quiet.”

With deliberate, stealthy movements, Barnes unslung his rifle and raised it, carefully taking aim.

Tony followed the line of the rifle’s barrel, but didn’t see anything. But Barnes obviously did, so he tried to stay as still as he could.

A long moment later, a fat, flightless bird strutted into the small clearing, gray with a wattled pink throat. Barnes pulled the trigger, sending a single echo of shot ringing through the wood, then the bird fell over in a squawk of feathers.

Tony jerked a little at the sound of the shot, and couldn’t help scanning the horizon all around them. “If there’s any zombies in the area, they’ll have heard that,” he said. “We shouldn’t stay out much longer.”

“Yep,” Barnes agreed. “Grab the bird. We’ll take it and the fish back to the fort. Cook it all. Still won’t last more than a week, but it’ll give us time to get to the next villa.”

Tony nodded and jogged over to the bird carcass. He scooped it up by the feet, letting the wings dangle, and made his way back to the stream, where Barnes was pulling in the net.

Barnes looked Tony over with an appraising eye. “We got almost a dozen here, good sized. You think you can eat that much?” He had already tossed two medium-sized black-brown fish -- with whiskers! -- onto the bank, and they were flopping weakly.

“In a week? I can eat six fish in a week, sure.” It couldn’t possibly be as tedious as subsisting on rat bars, which was mostly what Tony ate on the road.

Barnes fished (ha ha, pun) the rest of them out of the net and bound them together with a string that he fitted through their gills. “There’s so much I miss, sometimes, about Before. But we’ll make do. Them turnips ought to make for close enough to mashed potatoes. Little sharp, but close. Turkey’s good eating. And easily carried.”

He was already out of the water and heading back to the fort; the man was efficient like nothing Tony had ever seen before. “Do you… were you born, Before?” Bucky asked.

Tony hummed. “I was born right about the time it was taking off. It hadn’t reached us here, yet, but everyone knew it was coming. At least, that’s what my dad told me. I don’t really remember much.”

“I suppose that’s luck, of one sort,” Barnes said. “One of my burdens, really. Never being sure. They were experimenting with Rebirth -- human enhancement projects, they called them. Rebirth worked. But the outbreak started around the same time. No one knows, not really, if it was one of the other enhancement projects gone completely wrong, or Rebirth failed in a test subject with dramatically awful results, or something else entirely. By the time we knew how bad the troubles were, it was too late to point fingers.”

Tony nodded. “Dad was a researcher, trying to find a cure.” Howard’s failure on that front, Tony thought, had been what had driven him to drink and, eventually, to his death.

“Loads of people were. Every brain still available,” Barnes agreed. “Better than some solutions. You still can’t get anywhere near the Wastelands, down near what used to be Texas. And half of mainland China launched nukes, trying to contain the spread. Now they got _mutated_ zombies.”

Tony grimaced. “Thank god we’re not in China, I guess.” Howard had made sure he knew how the plague spread, the best ways to dispatch zombies, as much as it was possible for Tony to know. Howard’s notes were stored somewhere -- Tony wasn’t sure where, exactly. He’d once tried to find them, but hadn’t had much luck. The best leads had pointed into heavily contaminated areas.

“Fury thinks in another fifty years,” Barnes said, “it’ll be mostly over. The older zombies rot away enough. They don’t bother to get out of the rain, so they eventually just fall apart. You’ll get outbreaks, like New Albany, but-- eventually, we’ll get through it. If someone doesn’t come up with yet another stupid idea for a war. People are pretty damn stupid for being so smart.”

“I guess that’s a comfort,” Tony said. “Maybe our children’s children will be wiser. Who’s Fury? Another Nomad?”

“I guess you could say he’s the boss, if we had structure like that. We really don’t. But he’s a central point of information. If you have reports, they go to Fury. He collects information, has a bunch of really smart people working for him on the _Avenger_. Big old boat, used to be a landing strip for aircraft. But it’s almost impregnable, even for the zombies. They’re not utterly repelled by water or anything. A narrow river won’t stop them, but they’re generally not interested in swimming almost a mile out to sea.”

“Smart,” Tony said. “I wonder if that’s something people could do, live on the sea like that. You’d need a way to grow food...” He got caught up in imagining it, a self-contained vessel that the zombies simply couldn’t reach.

“We decide to spend a lot of time together, on your journey, maybe we could take a side trip, I’ll show it to ya. Fury would probably find you really interesting. And useful. Introduce you to some of the top minds of the current era, too. It’s not that far, east to the coast, then south, near where Old Deecee was. Some of the old cities are pretty heavy zombieland, but find a good boat, and we’re out of their reach, mostly.”

“I’d like that,” Tony said. “I could learn a lot from something like that.” Some of it could probably even be brought back to Tony’s regular route, help upgrade the towns he’d come to call home.

“It’s nice,” Barnes said. “To have someone to travel with. Most people are smart, they like to stay behind the walls. Which is smart, it’s safe. And it’s nothing I could ever manage. But I do get lonely, sometimes.” He shot Tony a look, hot and curious and interested and questioning all at the same time.

They were closing in on the fort; Tony could see the walls from where they were, and the ground was starting to look overly trampled again. The smell, once they’d been away from it, was strong. Fresh rot. Ug.

He shuddered, that smell dragging up a deeply-ingrained sense of unease, and scanned the horizon. “Lonely,” he echoed. “Yeah, I get lonely on the road, sometimes. It’s good to have someone to talk to.”

Barnes looked satisfied, almost happy. He flashed Tony a brilliant smile that Tony hadn’t seen before. Barnes had a very accomplished resting bitch face most of the time. “Together, then, until you get sick of me,” he said.

Which, of course, was when a small pack of zombies burst from the trees to attack.

* * *

Shit. Bucky had allowed himself to get distracted, filling a space in his life by proposing a partnership with Tony, and the damn infected had snuck up on them.

Well, probably not snuck. Zombies didn’t sneak. They didn’t even think about it, because, well, they didn’t think. But he hadn’t heard rustling or their strange, airless cries. Maybe they were getting smarter.

That was terrifying.

Or would be, as soon as they were safe and indoors again, and he had time to think about being terrified.

Instead, he grabbed his shockstick off his belt and tossed it to Tony, unshouldering his shotgun. He didn’t like firearms for close in work; it tended to bring on more infected, and longarms were for distance combat, but what choice? He couldn’t let Tony be unarmed.

He got the barrel around in time to shove it directly into an infected’s throat, pulling the trigger. Messy, wet; the zombie all but exploded at that close range, spraying rotted fluid everywhere.

The crackle of the shockstick coming to life was barely audible. Tony had dropped the turkey and was holding the shockstick in one hand and wearing some sort of mesh glove over the other. The defensive stance he’d dropped into wasn’t up to Nomad standards, but it was pretty good, for a civilian.

Tony spun under the sweep of a zombie’s ragged claws and jabbed it in the stomach with the stick. Not high enough to kill it, but enough to make its half-atrophied muscles seize up for a few vital seconds, during which Tony pressed the end of the shockstick against its throat, which should be close enough to the brain to do the job.

Bucky whirled, kicked one in the chest. It didn’t do any damage to the monster aside from get it away from them. Modified strength from the Rebirth project meant Bucky could kick something that weighed less than a man nearly forty feet. The thing that had once probably been a farmer’s wife snarled and came for him again, only to be met with a shotgun blast. Bucky drew his pistol -- always confirm your kills -- and shot it in the head, just to be certain. Why the brain never rotted while the rest of the creature did, Bucky still didn’t understand.

Tony dodged another zombie’s lunge, twisting past it and slapping it on the back of the head with that mesh glove. It let out a strange sound, almost like a sigh, and crumpled to the ground.

 _They’re not fast_ , Bucky’s captain whispered in the back of his head. _You can outrun them, outmaneuver them. They’re not smart. All they have is hunger and relentlessness. They’re predation hunters. You can’t relax until they’re all dead._

 _Oh, shut up, Stevie_ , Bucky all but snarled at the voice in his brain. _Busy right now._

He launched himself at another, using the metal arm to grab it; there was no way teeth could penetrate that to get at the circuits inside, and even if they did, it couldn’t infect him. He let the creature bite down on his fingers.

Which let him pull the entire jaw off.

“How you doing over there?” Bucky called, unable to concentrate on killing off their attackers if he was watching Tony. _Be okay, please be okay._

There was a grunt and a thump behind him. “Oh, just peachy,” Tony said. He sounded a little out of breath, but not hurt. “What the--” The shockstick let out a crackle of discharge. “And stay down!”

“Shift upward, toward the wall,” Bucky yelled. “Good to have something solid at your back. We got this.” He took a swing at one, which grabbed the barrel of his shotgun and yanked, pulling it out of his grip and breaking his finger. “ _Fuck_.” The gun went flying and he had a handful, quite literally, of angry zombie, all snapping teeth and lunging bites and claws.

The shockstick slid past Bucky’s ear to connect with the zombie’s face. “Come on,” Tony urged, tugging at the back of Bucky’s jacket. “Got to get inside!”

“Right behind you,” Bucky said, staggering back a step, then another, then turning to run.

Tony was jogging backwards, the shockstick and his glove held out in front of him, guarding. “Go!” he said. “I’ve got you covered!”

Bucky raced for the gate, slapping the entry panel as soon as he got close, the signal key in his hand activating the second he was in range. The gate slid down. “Come on, come on!”

Tony glanced back once, shocked the zombie closest to him, then turned and sprinted for the gate, not slowing at all until he was halfway down the entry hall.

“Well, that was exciting,” Bucky said, panting for breath as he slapped the door back up. There were still a few out there, but-- “Fuck, we lost the turkey.” 

“Maybe we can go back out for it after they’ve moved on,” Tony said, panting. “If they don’t find it and eat it. Have to go back out for your gun, anyway. Do you still have the fish?”

“They probably won’t eat it,” Bucky said, watching as the door sealed. They were safe. “They don’t really recognize stuff that’s dead as food, exactly. Fish, yes. We’re going to want to wash them really well; one of the damn infected practically oozed all over me. Yuck. But I don’t think they’ll be contaminated. Still got their scales on, an’ all that.”

He didn’t want to tell Tony -- or anyone -- about the days after the outbreak, when people had killed each other over food stores. It was one of his worst memories, walking away from hundreds of survivors who had practically turned feral. Sometimes he wondered if humanity hadn’t _deserved_ the outbreak.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Not sure cold-blooded creatures can carry it, anyway, but better safe than zombie. What about you?”

“Not bit,” Bucky said. He held up his right hand. “Damn thing broke my fingers. Might need you to set and splint for me.”

“Shit, why didn’t you say earlier?” Tony thumbed off the shockstick and dropped it, then came back over to cup Bucky’s hand in his, looking at it critically in the dim light of the corridor. “Yeah, let’s go do that now, while you’ve still got some adrenaline in your system keeping the pain levels down.”

There was something shiveringly vulnerable about letting Tony tend to his injury. He was, Bucky decided, entirely too used to being alone. Two broken fingers was going to make it difficult to fight, at least until it healed enough to pull the trigger again.

A week, maybe. Nomads healed pretty fast.

He found himself watching Tony’s face intently as he bound and wrapped Bucky’s fingers. Huge, wide, intelligent eyes that narrowed when he was thinking. And such a lovely color, rich golden brown, thick eyelashes. 

“Hard to believe you haven’t found some gal at one of these settlements, wants you to stay and make a bunch of beautiful babies with her,” Bucky said.

Tony flashed him a grin, beautiful and fleeting. “Who says I haven’t? But I’m not really the staying-put type. Wintering over somewhere is about all I can stand. There’s too much to be done, too many places that need what I can offer.” He went back to wrapping the bandages around Bucky’s fingers, deft and careful, making sure the cloth was smooth and snug. “I make do with a few nights here and there, someone smart and pretty. What about you? Do you have little Nomads somewhere?”

“At least one,” Bucky said, letting himself grin. “RJ’s been training, he’s seventeen. His mother promised to break it off for me, though, if I ever knocked her up again.” He thought-- he _thought_ RJ was seventeen. Had he lost track of time? Did he-- he didn’t have any other children that he knew of, but somehow-- something--

_\-- go, go, I’ve got this, get them to safety._

_They were so much more important than he was. If Bucky had to die to make sure they were safe, that was-- that was a good trade._

“Barnes? You spaced out again, you with me?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, shaking himself out. “I-- sometimes we talk about things and I feel… like there’s something I forgot. That-- I didn’t finish something. In the old days, we would have wondered if we’d left the stove on, at home. You know, that nagging feeling--”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, chuckling. “I used to worry I’d left my camp perimeter behind until I started packing it up at the front of the wagon.”

“I’ll either remember, or it’ll fade out,” Bucky said. He held up his bound fingers. “Guess you get to scale and clean the fish.” Perks to being injured, Bucky decided, trying not to smirk like he’d planned that. Because he hadn’t, but oh, wouldn’t Steve have kidded him about it?

Tony went still, eyes widening. “I... haven’t ever done that before,” he admitted. “Usually I’m just taking them straight into town to trade.”

“Worst case, we’ll just split ‘em in half and roast them in their skins,” Bucky said. “I’ll talk you through it. You’ve got steady hands.”

He had enough sharp knives for it, and splitting and gutting the fish he could do, using his right hand to hold the fish steady and the left for the cutting, but it didn’t take long before his fingers ached, and if they swelled too much, that was going to increase the time to heal. “Just get the tip of the knife up under the skin and slice. Careful, and you can almost peel it off.”

Tony’s first couple of attempts were awkward and messy, but then he seemed to catch on to the way the skin felt, dragging along the blade, and after that, they were pretty decently done. A little practice, and he could be almost as fast as Bucky at the job.

“Okay,” Tony said, looking down at his pile of cleaned fish. “What now?”

“Now we cook them,” Bucky said. “Should be some pots and pans around here somewhere.” They hadn’t bothered to find the kitchen before. No amount of cooking or spices could change ration bars into anything worth eating. But fish could be baked or fried or grilled. If there was salt or herbs, that would be great. If not, the wild garlic would flavor it well enough. 

They found the kitchen only a few doors from the storeroom. It was big, intended to support a full garrison, with plenty of options for cookware. There was salt, and even pepper, but some of the dried herbs had gone musty with age.

“Here we go,” Bucky said, pointing out a slender bottle. “Oil. Fried fish tonight, that’s easiest. Peel and chop like 2 garlic cloves, and then grease the pan, get it warm, and then we’ll cook it, about five or six minutes on a side.”

“I think I can do that,” Tony agreed.

“You remind me a bit of my sister,” he teased. “She never, ever wanted to cook if someone was around to do it for her. Back in our apartment, she wouldn’t even make a sandwich, back when we had pre-sliced bread and spreads in containers. She’d eat granola bars and pop tarts. If those things hadn’t been vitamin fortified, she’d have gotten scurvy, I swear it.”

“I can make a sandwich,” Tony protested. “Just never had a chance to learn how to cook. I live in rooms I trade for, or in my wagon.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky said, grinning. “So, peel off all the white stuff on the outside of the garlic, that’s all trash. Can’t eat that. You’ll have a little handful of knobs, about the size of the top of your thumb. That’s the edible stuff. We’ve got a little oil here, anything you cut up and we don’t use, we can put in the oil, that’ll help it stay fresh.”

Tony nodded and carefully peeled the garlic, cutting the cloves up neatly and then dropping them into the skillet. It wasn’t long before the sharp fragrance of the garlic was filling the room.

Bucky inhaled, remembering a thousand meals over campfires, on stoves, in shops. “Maybe I’ll just keep you,” he said.

Tony glanced at him sidelong, with an odd little smile that was hard to place. “There are worse fates,” he said philosophically.

Bucky poked the fish with a fork and slipped it into the oily pan. “Watch the splatters. Five or six minutes, then we flip it, and when it’s nice and flakey, we can eat.”

The cat strolled into the kitchen, kitten bumbling along behind on legs that weren’t quite coordinated yet. She twined through Bucky’s ankles, then stropped herself against Tony’s, letting out a singularly plaintive cry.

“You eat mice,” Tony told her.

“She’s trying some variety in her diet,” Bucky said.

“She’s trying, all right,” Tony said, amused, but he broke a little piece off one of the pieces of fish that was mangled anyway from his first attempts, and tossed it on the floor for her.

“You made a friend for life,” Bucky said. “The tricky part is going to be, is there a safe way to actually bring them with us, or will we be able to leave them here? I know a few Nomads who have dogs. Barton has one, the poor thing has one eye and three legs, but still, it won’t stay behind.”

“We’ll see, I guess. Cats are pretty independent. But they hate zombies. One of the towns I stop at keeps cats in the border zone and up on the wall. They can smell zombies coming way before human guards spot them.” Tony turned the fish over, and only one of the pieces fell apart in the process.

“I just don’t want them to follow us, if we can’t keep them safe,” Bucky said. “They’ll probably stay. Cats don’t need humans around as much as dogs do.” Not that he was, precisely, human anymore, but close enough. Less human than Tony. More human than the infected.

“Their choice,” Tony agreed. He prodded at the fish in the pan. “We going to eat out of the pan? Or are there plates?”

Bucky poked around. “I usually eat out of the pan when I’m on the road,” he admitted. “But you probably don’t want to sit in my lap while we have dinner.” Wooden plates and ancient, plastic utensils, left over from Before. “Back in my time, they used to tell us that plastic would take generations to degrade, and that this was a bad thing.” He offered Tony a fork.

Tony took the fork and turned it over, examining it. “I’ve got an aluminum mess kit, back in the wagon, if it’s still there. Nice and lightweight, durable. This is kind of cool, though. Most of the plastic you see in the villas is heavy-duty stuff.” He shuffled some fish onto the plates, and slid onto a chair at the little table.

Bucky put his plate down, then, “I seem to have acquired your friend.” Cats had a weird habit of gaining mass whenever someone tried to move them. Also, slippery little eely things. Bucky managed to sit, but then the cat was in his lap. So apparently, someone in his lap for dinner was going to be a thing. Okay, then.

Tony grinned. “She can be your friend as well, for the low, low price of a bite of fish, apparently.”

Bucky pushed her head back below the table. “So I see.” He poked the fish into flakes. “Smells good.” Because that was true. And Tony seemed oddly reluctant to try it first. Took a bite.

Bucky blinked. Fish. Garlic. Oil. Frying pan. How did one _mess that up_? Well, there was salt. And he had, in fact, eaten worse things in his life. 

Tony was watching him nervously. “Is it worse than rat bars?” He broke off a piece and put it in his mouth, and made a face. With apparent difficulty, he swallowed. “It might, in fact, be worse than rat bars.”

“I’m trying to figure out-- what _happened_ ,” Bucky said. “The garlic smells fine, the oil isn’t rancid… it’s a perfectly good fish.”

The cat, taking their distraction as permission, jumped onto the table, grabbed a good portion off Tony’s plate and took off with it.

“Well, you have one fan?”

Tony slumped in his chair dejectedly. “Three ingredients, and I can’t even manage that.”

“Maybe it’s the fish,” Bucky said. “Sometimes if they’ve been eating something weird, it flavors the meat wrong.” He took another bite anyway, after dusting the whole thing with salt. 

“You don’t have to eat it,” Tony said. “I know it’s awful.” Despite that, he stuffed a big piece in his mouth and swallowed quickly, as if trying not to taste it any more than necessary.

“Salt helps,” Bucky offered, pushing the shaker across the table. It wasn’t, on consideration, really terrible so much as the garlic was very fragrant, but the fish-- didn’t taste anything like garlic. In fact, it sort of tasted like muddy water, badly strained. 

Tony gave him a dubious look, but liberally salted his fish and tried again. “A little,” he conceded. “Maybe you should cook from now on.”

“Was this the one with whiskers?” Bucky wondered. “Those are bottom feeders, he might just have eaten too much river bottom.”

Tony jabbed at the fish with one plastic tine. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

Bucky ate another few bites before, really, he just couldn’t. He wanted to. But-- “I’m going to go see if our visitors have gone, and I can get my shotgun. And the turkey.”

Tony nodded, pushing his own plate away with visible relief. “Do you want me to cover you?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “They’ve probably moved on, but no sense taking chances.”

“Yeah.” Tony put his plate on the floor. “All yours, Fearless Hunter,” he told the kitten, prying it off his pants leg like a particularly stubborn bramble. “Let me just grab my gear.”  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder that this is a fic. In real life, please never never feed anything with garlic in it to a cat!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 27dragons - 3033 - T3: Major Injureis  
> tisfan - 3023 - R1: Journey

Tony was almost sorry to leave the fortress. It had been safe and comfortable. He’d enjoyed poking around at its mechanisms, learning more and more about how it all worked. If he were being honest, he’d enjoyed sleeping next to Barnes on the narrow mattress, too, warm and protected.

But part of him was glad to be out of its heavy, oppressive walls. Happy to be _going somewhere_ again.

Hunter was already secured in his travel basket -- there was an opening at the top that both cat and kitten could get in and out of -- and on Barnes’ shoulder. Mama, who was more prone to wandering between checks on her kitten, was trotting at Tony’s ankle like she’d been trained.

Barnes finished a recon sweep and declared that most of the land to the east past the river seemed to be clear. The swarm had moved southwest, toward warmer climate. Zombies didn’t sleep, not really, but very cold weather could force them into hibernation. Unfortunately, hibernating zombies were almost more dangerous than the regular kind. You didn’t see them before you stepped on them.

Or, at least, that was what Tony had heard. He’d never personally run into a zombie so cold and still that he didn’t see it. Thank god. That was one reason why he stayed in a settlement to winter over rather than simply continuing his route.

“Your wagon looked mostly unmolested,” he reported, “from what I could see with the binocs. We’ll swing by and get it, if you want. I can pull. It’ll be slower going than even with your donkey, but we’ll get there.”

“At the very least, we should swing by and see if it makes more sense to pull it or just re-pack the most valuable stuff,” Tony agreed. “That’s my whole livelihood.”

“Back, Before,” Barnes said, “we used to joke about how great it would be when we stopped having an economy. No money or labor for goods and services. For a few years after the outbreak, you mostly had that. If you wanted something, you just went into one of the old stores and took it. Fat lot of good it did you. No electric to run your playstation, no clear roads to drive your Audi. And look at us now. We still would let people starve to death rather than just give them something for nothing.”

“Sometimes,” Tony admitted. “Not everyone is like that.” He cocked his head a little, half-smiling. “The Nomads, for example, seem to be pretty giving.”

“The Captain, you know. Steve,” Barnes said, “would have given the shirt off his back. ‘ _There are people dying out there, every day, Bucky. Who am I to do any less?’_ But sometimes I think he just did it because he was ten pounds of pissed off in a two pound bag.”

“Well, zombies make a great target for aggression.” Mama cat strolled out of the grass looking pleased with herself, and Tony paused to lean down and scratch her ears. “You’ve been very generous,” he added. “I should thank you.”

“Cherish the living,” Barnes said. “Although, just between you and me, there are some living whose company I prefer more than others.” He slanted Tony a look, heated and somehow meaningful.

Tony felt heat along the back of his neck and a shiver in his stomach, far from unpleasant. “We all have our preferences,” he said, returning the look and letting his gaze linger on Barnes’ broad shoulders and narrow hips, the heavy muscle of those thighs.

“Perhaps we can discuss that,” Barnes said. “In a villa, with walls. A cup of wine, a little music, and a nice, safe place to sleep.”

“That sounds nice.” Tony scanned the horizon idly. “Next settlement up the road is on a crossroads, so it actually has an inn, not just spare rooms for let.”

“It’s a date, then,” Barnes said, and flashed Tony that rare but brilliant smile. He shifted his pack a little, ignoring the complaint from the kitten inside, and set off toward Tony’s wagon. It would take a half day to get there, and probably best to set their camp there, while Tony inspected and repaired, packed and organized.

He wondered if his friends in Valcor Island had decided he was dead, yet, or were still waiting eagerly for his arrival. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been late, even dreadfully late. A few years back, he’d stayed in Providence long enough to tutor a promising young man in engineering and mechanic work.

Or maybe they thought he’d decided to settle for the winter a little early. It had been a mild autumn, but there were any number of relatively benign things that might have delayed him -- a broken wheel, a big job, a lover... He cast a sidelong look at Barnes and smiled to himself. No, his friends were probably worried, but they wouldn’t have given up on him yet.

Maybe it would be a surprise, him turning up at the gates with an honest-to-gods Nomad in tow. That would be fun. Maybe they could do some hunting along the road, gather some extra game and late-season fruits and vegetables to make a proper feast.

Not being chased by zombies had some advantages. It meant they could peel out of most of their clothes before crossing the river and put them on a small, makeshift raft. Barnes wasn’t enough of a craftsman to make something they could steer, or ride in, but it was enough to keep their things -- including two very dismayed cats -- out of the water.

Still, the water was damned cold, and it was worse, somehow, getting in it without the fear driving them forward.

“You need a ferry crossing,” Tony complained, teeth chattering. An unmanned system, of course, but the river wasn’t all that wide. A few lengths of rope and a system of pulleys might do the trick. It would need a counterweight at one end... He spent the rest of the crossing mentally designing the thing. The zombies were unlikely to pay it much heed -- if it wasn’t edible, they weren’t interested -- and it could be useful for the few humans who came this way. Like the Nomads.

“I wouldn’t say no to an easier crossing,” Barnes said, pushing the basket in front of him, trying to move smoothly through the water without upsetting their passengers. “Although, there’s a gorge and river somewhat south of here that they have a speed-line to the other side. A small cart hangs over the line and you just climb in and zip across. Terrifying. I’d rather face a horde.”

“Sounds kind of like flying,” Tony said. “I’d like to give it a try.” They finally reached the far bank and dragged themselves up onto the shore, pausing to wring out their clothes, as much as they could, before pulling on the items they’d managed to keep dry.

The cats were almost more relieved to be on the far shore than the humans; especially since four legs were an advantage over two as they climbed up the embankment. 

Barnes led the way, stopping on outcroppings from time to time to scan the area. An abundance of caution, but Tony knew it wasn’t too much, really. All it took was one wrong move and they’d face the horrifying task of putting someone down before the infection overtook them. And even then, sometimes they’d come back, if you weren’t careful enough..

Tony had seen it happen. More than once. He’d rather not see it again. Or experience it personally.

Barnes was carrying his armored vest and face-mask, rather than wearing it. Trying to fasten it correctly over wet skin was difficult and the fittings were important to keep from getting blisters.

Climbing the embankment at least had the benefit of warming Tony up again, though he wasn’t sure it was much of an improvement, really. “When was the last time you were behind walls and among people?” he asked to distract himself from the way his hands stung from where he’d nearly fallen and skinned them on a rock.

“A few years back, I spent the winter in New Albany. Do you remember, the snow was so thick no one could get in or out for almost two months?” Barnes glazed over a little bit, then shook his head. “And-- not too long ago, people. There were some children, we escaped through the old underground-- I took them--”

Barnes stopped, like he sometimes did, staring into the distance and frowning. It wasn’t like the searching gaze he trained on the land as he looked for zombies. It was inwardly focused, uncertain. “Barnes?” Tony tried, nudging him lightly on the arm.

“I keep-- thinking I didn’t do something,” Barnes said. “I’m all right. Maybe it’s a side effect of being so damn old. Sometimes I feel every one of a hundred years.”

“Might just be the head injury,” Tony pointed out. “Those take a while to settle, sometimes.” Sometimes they never did, entirely, but Tony couldn’t quite bring himself to say so.

“Yeah,” Barnes said. “You’d have liked them. The kids, I mean. MJ and Peter managed to rig an old microwave and some battery packs as a sort of bomb. Cooked those zombies from the inside out. Rather gruesome, but effective.”

“They sound like my kind of kids,” Tony agreed, grinning. “Maybe I’ll run into them, sometime.”

“They’re safe,” Barnes said. “Safe as houses.”

“Houses aren’t that safe,” Tony pointed out. “Not unless they’re behind walls.”

Barnes shook his head. “Well, perhaps. But the base should be safe enough, bunkered down. They’re… smart kids.”

“Sounds like it,” Tony said. At last, they’d reached the top of the embankment. He hauled himself to the top and sat down, huffing.

The instant his lap was available, Mama grabbed Hunter by the scruff and deposited the kitten into Tony’s care. 

“I’ll put lunch together while we catch our breath, then no more than an hour over to your wagon,” Barnes said. He opened one of the tiny portable campfires and lit it. No smoke and very little smell, it probably wouldn’t attract any of the infected.

_Catch our breath_ , Barnes had said, as if he were remotely out of breath. Nice of him to put the meal together, though, while Tony was trying to remember how lungs worked.

He watched, trying to figure out what Barnes did differently that made so much of a difference in whether the food was edible. He couldn’t identify anything readily. He’d have to watch more closely next time.

Barnes flipped the fish. Added a little salt, and then scraped them onto plates. The meat was soft, fragrant, and almost too hot to eat, which did not keep Tony from shoving a bite into his mouth and then sucking air to cool his gums. “Where did you grow up?” Barnes wondered. “Surely you weren’t a traveling tinker your whole life?”

“Nah,” Tony said. He broke off a bit of fish for the cats and set it to the side so they’d stop trying to crawl into his plate, however temporarily. “Dad was from New York. When word of the plague came, he moved the whole household up into the mountains, with a bunch of other scientists. He was part of a thinktank, studying the plague. At least for a while.”

“Other smart kids to play with?” Barnes cleaned the pan with a quick swipe of cloth and started breaking down their small camp. “I... I taught-- I taught Harley how to play poker.”

“Poker, I can play,” Tony chuckled. “Wasn’t really a lot of time for play, not once things started spreading over here. Lots of time in the classroom, lots of time in the lab, helping Dad. I wasn’t as good with squishy science as mechanics and physics, but you don’t have to be a genius to observe culture growths and check replication rates.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” Barnes said. “Don’t need to be a genius to let a bunch of thinktanks inject you with experimental serums, either. I remember spending weeks trying to figure out what all they’d done to me. They used to run their tests over and over again. The one guy, he said ‘don’t give me a miracle, Barnes! Miracles can’t be replicated in a lab.’”

Tony grimaced. That sounded all too familiar. “That’s horrible.”

“How much can you lift, how much can you bench, white blood cell count, blood pressure, heart rate, what’s the ounce to sperm ratio in your spend? Questions, tests, filming. If you don’t write it down it’s not science,” Barnes said. “Finally Steve had enough, broke us all out and we went and stomped out a zombie nest.”

Tony laughed. “He sounds like quite a guy.”

“He was pretty much somethin’ else,” Barnes told him. “Brave and loyal and maybe a little bit stupid. Stubborn as hell.”

“Was?”

“Sure he still is,” Barnes said. “Just-- haven’t seen him in a while. There’s not so many Nomads as there used to be. We’re spread wider. On the plus side, most of the time, there ain’t as many zombies as there used to be, either. Still, there were seven million people in New York City alone, back Before. That’s a lot of damn zombies.”

“Yeah. After Dad quit the thinktank, he spent some time coming up with ways to kill them. He had this plan, for a while, that he was going to put a giant net around the city and just electrify the whole place, kill everything in it. He couldn’t get the power plants up and running, though.”

Barnes chuckled. “Probably good he didn’t. There’s been scavengers and survivors for decades. Cherish the living. Only kill the infected. Here’s your wagon, all safe and sound and unmolested. Mostly.”

“Ah, Dammit,” Tony sighed. The donkey wasn’t even a carcass; the zombies had scoured the flesh right down to the bones, scattered now across the path and trailing off into the trees where they’d been dragged or dropped. The leads that had connected the animal to the wagon had been gnawed on, and were hanging limply. Tony toed one with a boot. This long after the swarm had come through, none of the remaining virus would still be alive, but it still made his skin crawl to think about. He’d have to cut away the ruined leather and fashion another way to pull the wagon, if they were going to take it with them.

Mama hissed, puffing up, her tail nearly as big around as her head. Barnes turned, startled, staring around at the clearing. “You think she just smells their traces?”

“Maybe,” Tony said, looking around as well. She hadn’t reacted like this when they’d crossed the swarm’s path earlier, but they wouldn’t have lingered there, not with any food near the fortress. They would have stopped here to consume Dammit’s remains. Maybe the duration let the smell soak in longer, or something. Tony glanced up at the sky, the sun beginning to slant downward. “Be careful. There’s a lantern in the wagon if you need one.”

“I would say careful’s my middle name, darlin’, except it’s Buchanan,” Barnes joked. He picked his way over the bits of debris until he reached the back of the wagon, still moving cautiously, watching the cats from one corner of his eye.

“That’s a hell of a name to be saddled with,” Tony chuckled. “Your parents lose a bet or something?” He pulled the utility knife from its pocket and went to work on the damaged leather, trying not to touch the obviously-chewed bits.

Barnes was poking around in the back of the wagon, explaining pedantically what _history_ was and how he was named after a historical figure, generally being a smart ass. Tony adored it.

And then--

“Jesus, _fuck_!”

Barnes toppled backward out of the wagon, a snarling something clinging to him like a burr.

Tony whirled around, whipping the shockstick out of his belt even before he actually got a look at the zombie. Three fast steps and he jabbed the thing right in the back and thumbed it on. The crackle of electricity was loud in his ears, even over Mama’s warning yowl and Hunter’s wail of dismay.

Barnes struggled with the beast for a moment, then launched it upward, using his powerful legs to throw it. He rolled to his feet, drew his gun and fired. One, two, three.

“Fuck,” he said again, one hand held against his shoulder. Blood seeped out between his fingers.

Terror washed through Tony, colder than the icy river had been. “Tell me it just clawed you,” he said, breathless with fear. He pulled at Barnes’ hand, tugging the cloth away from the wound. “Please--”

“Sorry, darlin’,” Barnes said. “Guess you’ll be gettin’ that drink with some other fella.” He took a few steps backward and all but fell into the wagon.

“No.” The utility knife was still in his hand; Tony slashed through the cloth to reveal Bucky’s arm. Blood covered the area, thick and red, but when Tony used the ruined sleeve to wipe it away, the curved shape of the bite-mark was unmistakable. “Oh god, no. Barnes...”

“It’s all right,” Barnes said. He looked up, meeting Tony’s eyes. “You’ll be okay. There’s a day or so between bite and infection. I can get you most of the way to the next villa.”

Tony couldn’t tear his eyes from that wound, couldn’t stop thinking about what it meant. Couldn’t stop remembering the last time he’d seen a bite so fresh...

“ _No_.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tisfan (3023) - R3: This Won't Hurt a Bit  
> 27dragons (3033) - A5: Wish)

“ _Faster!” Howard snarled, “get her in here! There, on the table!” He was already scrambling in his safe, pulling out samples, glancing at the labels and discarding them haphazardly._

_Tony pressed into the corner, fist stuffed halfway into his mouth to keep from crying as the assistants laid his mother on the table, blood streaming down her shoulder and arm from where the zombie had bitten her. She cried out in pain with every movement; the thing had taken a huge chunk of skin off the back of her shoulder, leaving a gaping hole where muscle and skin should be._

_Howard had found the sample he wanted. He snatched up a syringe and shoved it into the vial. “I won’t let you go, Maria,” he swore. “Not like this.”_

“ _H-howard,” she gasped. “It’s too late, darling. Let me say goodbye--”_

“ _No!” Howard snapped. “This slows the progress, we’ve_ seen _it work. It just has to be a big enough dose!”_

_Maria’s head turned and her eyes caught on Tony’s. “Bambino,” she whispered, reaching out to him with an arm painted scarlet with her own blood. “My darling, always remember I loved you.”_

“ _You’re going to be fine, Maria,” Howard snarled, as if he could intimidate the virus into leaving her blood. He stuck the needle into her skin and she let out another soft cry as he depressed the plunger. The emptied vial clattered to the floor and rolled until it was stopped by Tony’s boot, and he scooped it up without thinking, his eyes still on Mama’s face, contorted with pain._

_It was still in his pocket thirty-six hours later, when he watched Howard kill the thing that had been his mother._

“No, no, no,” Tony growled, climbing over Barnes and into the wagon. He was distantly aware that he must look like his father had looked, all those years ago, flinging things aside until he found what he was looking for. Maybe this had been how Howard had felt, desperate for any chance to save the one he cared about from the fate of undeath.

In the very bottom of his clothing trunk, wrapped in layers and layers of protective cloth and precious plastic, was a lockbox. With shaking fingers, Tony pulled the key from its concealment on the underside of the trunk and opened it. A vial and a syringe, carefully swaddled in more cloth and straw.

Prize in hand, he crawled back out of the wagon, filling the syringe by the last light of the fading sun.

“Tony, what are you doing?” Barnes murmured more than asked. “We’re-- we should go. Before there’s more of them. I’m not afraid. We’ll get you most of the way there, and then-- all my pain will go away. It’s all right, darlin’.”

“It is _not_ all right,” Tony said. “But I know what he did wrong. It worked, it would have worked, but he injected it so it would keep the infected blood from reaching the _heart_. Keep it from spreading it through more of her body. It’s not a bad guess, but it’s _wrong_.” Tony helped Barnes sit up a little straighter, tugged the shirt away from the neck. “The virus doesn’t work on the blood. The blood just _carries_ it. The virus works on the _brain_. _That’s_ what we have to protect.”

He paused, cupped Barnes’ face with his free hand. “I can stop it,” he promised. “I have to try. Please let me try.”

“Tony-- there’s no cure,” Barnes told him. “There’s never been a cure, they were never even close.” He took a deep breath, raised that metal hand of his to touch Tony’s face, ran a cold thumb over Tony’s trembling lip. “You have to let me go.”

“It’s not a cure,” Tony said solemnly. “Once the virus takes hold, this is no more effective than plain water. But it _does_ destroy unattached viral cells. It can stop the virus from ever taking hold. Let me _try_ , Barnes. Please.” He glanced at the sun. “The window of opportunity is closing; blood circulates fast.”

“All right,” Barnes said. “You can try. But promise me, if this does not work, you will shoot me. I don’t want to go out like this. Not like this. I’d rather die at the hands of someone I-- care about.”

Tony had spent most of his life with this moment hanging over him, as it hung over every person left alive. He’d never resented Howard for having to destroy his mother’s infected body, but he’d always hoped that choice would never fall to him. “I will,” he promised gravely. “At the first sign.”

No more time to waste. He pressed his fingertips against the vertebrae at the back of Barnes’ neck, counting, feeling for the soft spaces between, and settled the tip of the syringe. Checked his angle. “This won’t hurt a bit,” he lied, and pushed.

Barnes jerked like Tony had electrocuted him, his hand spasming open and closed. He bit down on a cry, only the faintest moan escaping between his teeth.

"What the _fuck_ is that?" he managed to demand.

“Do you really want the science right now?” Tony wondered. He finished injecting the solution -- thick and viscous, it moved through the syringe only slowly -- and withdrew the needle. “It forces the zombie virus to bind with it instead of your neural receptors. That’s why it had to go into your spine. Fastest route to the brain.” He sat back, watching Barnes closely, as if he would be able to see any change so soon.

"It's like tryin' to breathe _bleach_ ," Barnes said, clenching his jaw. "Burns."

“Yeah, I know.” It had originally been intended as a vaccine of sorts; Howard had given it to Tony before they’d discovered it didn’t actually train white blood cells to attack the virus, and it didn’t stay in the system long enough to do any good. “That doesn’t last too long. A few minutes. Maybe a bit longer, since you’re...” He refused to say _infected_. “In danger. Just take deep breaths. It’s okay if you scream.”

Barnes gave him a dry look. "Thanks for the permission." He reached out, hand shaking, and touched Tony's face again. "Wish we had more time."

“We will,” Tony promised. He curved his hand over Barnes’, pressed it to his skin. “We’re going to have all the time in the world.”

"Optimist," Barnes accused. "Listen to me. The _Avenger_ is off shore, about two hundred miles south. If you can get a radio working, they should have someone scanning frequencies. Tell Fury what happened." Barnes shifted, groaned. His right hand scraped over his left, and then removed one of the plates from the metal arm. What he handed Tony was a link bracelet with a red star dangling from the chain. "Tell him I made you my heir." 

Tony closed his hand around the bracelet tightly enough that he could feel the points of the star pressing into his skin. “If it comes to that,” he agreed. “But it won’t. You’re going to _recover_ , and then we’re going to go to Valcor Island and take a damned vacation.”

"'f you say so," Barnes said. 

He arched, hissing with pain. He exhaled enough that Tony saw his face turn red, breathed out until there couldn't possibly be any more air in his lungs. When he hitched in a breath, finally, he pushed it out in a scream.

Tony was honestly impressed that he’d held it back this long. It had felt like sandpaper scraping through his veins, searing lightning flashes of pain through all his limbs.

At least Barnes could still _feel_ pain. The zombies couldn’t feel pain. They didn’t feel anything but hunger.

Tony stood up long enough to check that there was no movement nearby, then pulled out the canteen, opened it, and pressed it carefully into Barnes’ hands. “Drink, if you can,” he urged. “I’m going to set up the camp perimeter. We’re not going anywhere tonight.”

He winced every time he heard a fresh scream, but forced himself to focus on laying down the wire netting that would electrify any zombie that tried to cross it. It would be useless against a swarm, but should hold well enough against any stragglers who happened across them. He double-checked and then triple-checked his connections, then attached them to the heavy battery and turned it on. The hum of the electricity was soothing, almost a lullaby, whispering _safety_.

Tony came back to Barnes and crouched next to him. “Anything I can do? Water? Food?”

Barnes was panting for breath, sweaty and trembling. "Tell me some of them pretty lies," he said. Hunter was curled up on Barnes' chest, purring like a little motor. "Everything's gonna be fine, right?"

“Of course it is,” Tony said. He scratched the kitten’s ears, then took Barnes’ hand and stroked lightly over the back of it, soothing and petting. “Come morning, you’ll be fine. We’ll have some breakfast and then head on our way to Valcor Island. Couple of days, tops, I’m pretty sure. And once we’re there, we’ll get a room at the inn and have a few drinks and relax, doesn’t that sound nice? Just take a day.”

"Missed my chance with you, didn't I?" Barnes shifted and sighed. "Damn it. Seems like everything is gettin' dark. Could have… loved…"

Barnes' eyes slid shut.

“Barnes?” Tony asked hoarsely. With trembling fingers, he reached out, felt for the pulse at Barnes’ throat.

Underneath the pads of his fingers, Barnes’ pulse was rapid but steady, thrumming and strong.

Tony sighed and sat back. Maybe it would be better if Barnes slept through it, anyway. He wasn’t sure how long the pain would last, while the mixture was targeting the zombie virus. And... just in case it didn’t work, well. That would be easier on Barnes, too.

Tony, on the other hand, was definitely not sleeping. Not until he knew. He scooted back a little, giving Barnes some space, laid the shock stick across his lap, and settled in to watch.

* * *

Bucky had killed multiple friends who’d become infected. Some of the other Nomads preferred less damning phrases. _Retired_. _Dispatched_. Bucky had never tried to hide what it was -- he’d executed people he cared about, rather than let them become _things_. 

He’d allowed a few of them to wait as long as possible, giving them time to say their goodbyes, to scrawl out notes with hands shaky from fear and grief, before he’d killed them, even while he was weeping with the need.

What he’d never done was asked them how it felt. What did it feel like, turning into a mindless monster?

He wished he had asked.

Because now he didn’t know.

Bucky hadn’t expected to wake up with anything like a mind left. If Tony wasn’t smart and didn’t blow his brains out as soon as Bucky passed out. Which -- frankly -- Bucky would have appreciated.

But now he was awake. 

And he didn’t know how he was supposed to feel.

There was rather a lot of pain; that wasn’t unexpected. Like someone had poured a cactus into his veins, boiled him alive, and stomped him flat all at the same time.

His arm ached. But it was an _ache_ , like a healing wound. His eyes felt scratchy, and every limb he owned weighed six hundred pounds. Each.

But he managed to get his eyes open, and it was morning. The sun was way too bright, like every hangover he’d ever had came back to visit.

“Tony?”

“Still with me?” Tony said from behind him. “How are you feeling?”

“Kinda hungry,” Bucky admitted. “But not in a _arrr, brains_ sort of way. Leftover fish would be fine.”

Tony chuckled. “Yeah, we’ve got some leftover fish.” There was a shuffling sound and then Tony walked into Bucky’s field of view. “You look good,” he said. “I mean, kind of exhausted. But the wound doesn’t look infected or like it’s turning necrotic, which is one of the first signs. Your eyes look clear. Probably still have another twenty-four hours until we can be absolutely sure, but it’s a good start.” He held out the frying pan with the cold fish in it.

“I am kinda exhausted,” Bucky said. “Like the ghost of vodka hangovers past all decided to have a party in my chest. How are _you_?”

Because Bucky had been no good for anything last night. There could have been a full on swarm, and he didn’t think he would have noticed, wavering somewhere between sleeping agony and waking nightmares.

“Tired,” Tony admitted. “Didn’t sleep. But we didn’t have any unwelcome visitors. Hunter got a whisker singed when he got too close to the perimeter net, but he’s smart, so he didn’t try it again.”

“Musta just hit the last straggler in the swarm. Bad damn luck. Glad you’re not hurt.” He couldn’t really bring himself to look at Tony and he wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe because he hadn’t _believed_ Tony. Thought Tony was suffering from what the Nomads sometimes called Desperate Hysteria. Nearly everyone who’d lost someone -- a lover, a child, a parent, a friend -- caught it from time to time. That hope that this time, this time, it would be different.

It never had been.

Until now.

Tony reached out and helped Bucky sit up, slowly, carefully. “Eat,” he suggested. “There’s water, too. That might help with that hangover feeling.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. He rinsed his mouth out, spit, and then took a few swallows. He knew the timing as well as anyone. If he was infected, they’d know it by now. Even Nomad physiology was no match for the virus. “Thank you.” For more than the water. 

“You’re welcome.” Tony let out a slow sigh, and then his breath caught and hitched. He put both hands over his face. “God, I’ve never been so scared in my damned life.”

“I would-- I wouldn’t… Tony, I swear to you, I’d have ended it before I was a danger to you,” Bucky said. Because that was paramount, wasn’t it? Cherish the living. Even if you _became_ the dead.

Tony huffed from behind his hands. “I wasn’t scared you were going to _bite_ me,” he said. “I was afraid I was going to lose you before we ever even got a chance to try.”

Oh. _That_.

“I wouldn’t-- have said so much if I thought I was going to be alive today,” Bucky said. He could feel his neck heating, which was unfair. Was there ever a time in his life he could just not be embarrassed and flustered when talking to someone about feelings? Probably not. “A drink, an’ a dance, and see how things went. You don’t gotta feel obligated.”

Tony looked up from his hands, and if he was still a little pale, he also looked slightly exasperated. “I’m not _obligated_ , I’m _interested_. In case that wasn’t already abundantly clear before all...” He waved one hand around vaguely. “... _this_ happened.”

“Yeah?”

Because it didn’t really seem likely. Bucky’s life was… all this, that happened. It wasn’t the sort of thing most people wanted to do. Some of the Nomads formed partnerships; he knew one who had a smallwife in every town and ran a wide patrol between them. But-- any sort of relationship that wasn’t a few wild nights and a sweet memory. Well, that wasn’t really a thing that happened.

He’d take the wild nights, gratefully. But he’d been moving very slow with it because-- well, he was pretty sure leaving Tony behind was going to be painful.

“Yes,” Tony said. “Unless that’s a thing Nomads aren’t allowed to do, or...” He shrugged, and now there was color in his face, a splotch of pink in his cheeks. “I like you, Barnes. A lot.”

“We’re warriors, not monks,” Bucky said. “And uh. I like you, too. You know… you can probably call me by my first name. If you want to. It’s Bucky. Bucky Barnes.”

“Bucky,” Tony repeated. “Why the-- Buchanan. Okay, I see it. Okay, Bucky. You’ve got my first name, but the last is Stark. Tony Stark.”

Stark. 

Bucky stared. Well if course, it made sense if Bucky thought about it. "Stark?"

“Yeah?” Tony cocked his head, studying him closely. “You okay? Still with me?”

The _thinktank_. The labs. "You're… so tell me, how are you related to Howard?"

Tony jerked, eyes going wide. “You knew Howard?”

"Howard _made_ us. The Nomads. All of us. Him and Erskine, backed by the SSR." 

Tony’s hands were covering his mouth, now. “Holy shit. You--”

"Before the outbreak, they called us the Howling Commandos. We were… special fighting units." During the war. Before the outbreak. Before Red Skull and everything that came after.

“Dad talked about you,” Tony whispered, his eyes still dinner-plate round. “The Howling Commandos. I had no idea...”

"Of all the people to save my life…" Bucky marveled. "Incredible. It's almost enough for me to regain my faith in a higher power."

“Not sure I’d go _that_ far,” Tony said. He settled a little more comfortably, leaning back against the wagon wheel. Mama climbed up into his lap immediately and insisted that he pet her. “So... What now?”

"Much as it pains me to upset the cat," Bucky said, "I think I want to celebrate being alive when I didn't think I would be. And rejoice that there is still hope."

It seemed selfish, but maybe… "Will you kiss me, Tony?"

Tony scratched Mama’s ears and then gently dumped her off his lap, twisting toward Bucky. His hands cupped Bucky’s face, thumbs brushing lightly over the skin, rasping at the stubble. He studied Bucky’s eyes for a long moment, as if they might hold the answer to some long-sought question, then dipped his chin to brush his lips across Bucky’s lightly once, twice, and coming back to linger.

“Thank you,” Bucky said, again. “For everything. And today, I will rest, and recover. And tomorrow, we’re going to find this villa. I want my vacation.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tisfan 3023 - T4: Games  
> 27dragons 3033 - R1: Bedtime Stories

The next villa was Valcor Island. Even before the War and the Outbreak, Valcor had been accessible only by ferry. A tiny island, just over two miles at its widest point -- the settlers and survivors had built both up and out. Immense dock systems and partly floating houses covered acres of land over the lake. Good fishing. And several pontoon-gardens.

Before the Crossing, there was a small building with locked doors and thick walls. _Quarantine._

“It might be tricky, convincing them I’m not infected,” Bucky said. “Wound’s still fresh. They might shoot me on sight. Do you want to get a lay for the land and come back for me?”

“Yeah, I’ll go ahead. I don’t want word to spread that we’ve got a solution for bites -- it has too many variables for general use, it’s got to be applied _immediately_ and _precisely_ , and the pain level and the fact that it immediately incapacitates the victim is... not ideal. I’m going to write to the thinktank, see what they’ve got. In the meantime, you were bit by a horse, okay? They may still want us to sit in quarantine for a day to be safe.”

Bucky nodded. He knew if he was in charge of keeping a villa free of infection, he wouldn’t want to let in any stranger with a bite no matter how rational they seemed. But forty-eight hours was the longest time he had ever heard of someone living before they succumbed to the virus. Usually it was less than twelve hours. Less, if the bleeding was particularly bad. 

And in the meanwhile, there was no sense raising people’s hopes, although an emergency kit-- that was more hope even than most people had. They’d tear Tony apart, looking for that hope. Best to keep it quiet, right now.

Tony smiled at him, an adorably shy sort of twist of his mouth, and he squeezed Bucky’s hand before heading further up the road. He’d clearly been here before; he didn’t look around curiously as he approached the guardhouse, kept his hands out and clearly visible until they called for him to stop.

Bucky was exhausted. They’d gotten some rest, but they also dealt with two other attacks, and Bucky got nervous enough about being so exposed that he ground through the pain and they each grabbed a rail on the cart and _hauled ass_. Bucky hoped the villagers wouldn’t shoot first. And also that they had a horse for sale. Or something. Because Tony’s damn wagon was heavy.

He was talking to a guard now, who had come out of the house and shaken Tony’s hand and looked friendly. Bucky had no illusions, however, that there wasn’t a second guard still inside with a weapon trained on Tony. Tony was waving his hands as he talked, so expressive that Bucky could almost fill in the entire conversation: zombie attack, beast killed, been pulling the wagon by hand for two days... He leaned in close to the guard after a moment -- explaining that Bucky looked like he had been bitten, but of course it wasn’t a _zombie_ bite...

The guard nodded along gravely, then jerked his chin toward the quarantine house. At least he looked a little sympathetic about it.

Not that it mattered; there wasn’t a quarantine house anywhere in world that could hold a Nomad for long. He sighed and pulled on the rest of his gear. He might as well look like what he was.

It hurt, because of course it did. The armor fit very tightly, kept him in its protective embrace. His shoulder was still swollen. 

On the plus side, they’d probably make him take it off almost immediately.

It wasn’t long before Tony came back down the road to help Bucky haul the wagon the rest of the way in. “Quarantine house,” he confirmed. “At least a day. Usually, they’d say two, but the bite already looks half-healed, so they’ll probably rate it older than it is.” He tucked his arms into the harness he’d devised that helped with the pulling. Amusingly, it looked like he had an entire wagon stuffed into his backpack. “On the plus side, they’ll feed us while we’re locked in, since we’re out of even rat bars.”

“We’ve got several trophies,” Bucky said. “You know if they pay bounty? Otherwise, I hope you got somethin’ to trade.”

“Some bounty, not much, since they don’t often need to leave the lake,” Tony said. “But living on the water is hell on craft and buildings, so they’ll want my skills as soon as we’re cleared through the gate. Don’t worry about being able to pay our way.”

It didn’t take long; the guards did an inspection, and then had them change into less dangerous-looking clothing, but they didn’t know that Bucky had a set of picklocks and two small knives inside his mechanical arm. If he decided it wasn’t safe for them to stay, they’d leave.

The quarantine building was small, with two sets of bunk beds, a table, and a few chairs. A coal heater, which was a nice addition. Unlike gasoline, which went stale relatively quickly, coal could last for decades before it would lose potency.

“Not bad,” Bucky said, leaning back in the bed -- he stole all the pillows off the other bunks to prop himself up as a concession to his aching shoulder. “I’ve been in worse jails.”

“It’s only a day,” Tony pointed out. “It’s a good place.” He pulled open a drawer in the table, grinned, and tossed a faded pack of cards onto the table. “Something to keep us occupied.”

“And what will we wager for?” Bucky wondered. “I’ve seen you mostly naked three times now, so strip poker’s not going to do it.” He gave Tony a wink and watched in delight, as Tony flushed.

“And you’re not about to choke down more of my cooking, so we won’t be trading chores, either.” Tony tapped at his chest, then pulled the cards from the box and started shuffling them, dextrous fingers quick as they cut and fanned the deck. “Did you have something in mind, esteemed Nomad?”

“Favors?” There was a complicated betting system that the Nomads had -- it would take an hour, at least, just to explain it, but the simplified version boiled down to “I owe you one.” Or, in the case of Sam Wilson, if Bucky ever saw him again, about twenty. 

Tony considered it, riffling the deck a few more times, then nodded. “Favors, then.” He waved at the chair opposite him. “What’s your game?”

“Seven-card stud,” Bucky said, watching Tony’s hands. He was quick, and Bucky thought he might be amused to attempt to cheat in a friendly game. Just to see if he could. Which had its own bit of fun attached to it.

Tony nodded and dealt the cards, flicking them across the table to land in a neat pile on the opposite side. He set the deck aside and gathered up his own cards, rearranging them with a studious frown. “For a few hands, poker’s not too bad,” he said idly. “Little boring with only two players, though.”

“My sisters and I used to play Uno, back in the day,” Bucky observed. He selected two cards and shuffled them around a bit, trying to see what he had without giving anything away. He was so used to wearing a mask, his poker face might need some work.

“I’ve played Uno,” Tony said. “We had a deck at the lab. But this is not an Uno deck. Bets?”

“I’ll open with one portion of a favor -- ten portions makes an entire favor,” Bucky told him. “I suppose we could ask the guards to play. Awkward, though, with them having to reach through the bars.”

“One portion it is,” Tony agreed, and shuffled out two cards to discard.

They played through several hands and Bucky learned many things about the man he was planning to take as a lover. The first was that Tony could count cards as easy as if he were breathing, and calculate odds with terrifying accuracy. The other thing was, he seemed almost psychologically incapable of _not bluffing_. When he had nothing, or even when he had _something_ , he practically telegraphed everything right onto his face.

Which was how -- after a bit -- Bucky realized he was being played.

Tony glum face as he hesitated over his discards and trades that ultimately led to a damn flush. Or the sly, twitchy little smile Tony tried so hard to suppress until Bucky gave in and folded... only to reveal Tony’s hand was nothing but junk, a Jack high and nothing better. Tony’s control over his expression was, apparently, absolute, an advantage he employed at every turn.

After Bucky was four favors in the hole, he shook his head in disgust. “We need a more random game,” he decided, “Before I’m life-debted to you.”

Tony laughed, shuffling again. “Would that really be so bad?” he wondered with a wink. “What do you want to play, then? Go Fish?”

Bucky shook his head, amused. “I already owe you-- more than I can ever repay. But sure, why not. Go fish.”

Tony laughed and dealt out some cards, setting the remainder of the deck very scrupulously in the center of the table. “No betting in Go Fish,” he observed as he rearranged his hand. “Shall we make it a favor a game? Half a favor?”

“Half a favor per hand, until I make sure you’re not telepathically controlling the cards or something,” Bucky said. 

Tony snorted and leaned back in his chair. “Do you have any fours?”

“Go fish,” Bucky told him, glanced at his cards again. “Any Jacks?”

Which began the most cutthroat game of Go Fish possibly ever known to man. Tony’s ability to count cards was almost miraculous. 

They were down to the last few cards when Tony squinted at the deck, then glared at Bucky’s hand as if he could read straight through them, and said, “...Tens?”

Bucky grumbled and handed over two of them, then-- “Sevens?”

Tony’s mouth dropped open in shock. “What the--” He actually twisted around in his seat, looking for-- Bucky didn’t know. Mirrors or co-conspirators or something. “How did--” He pouted, which was unfairly adorable, and slapped three sevens down on the table.

Bucky put down his card. “And I’m out.”

“You _cheated_ ,” Tony accused. He eyed the cards on the table suspiciously, then picked up the scant few cards remaining in the deck. “Pff. The very bottom. Of course.” He tossed his cards down with a sigh. “All right, you win that one.”

“How very gracious,” Bucky murmured. “Come over here a minute, that pout’s gonna stick on your face if you leave it there too long.”

“Hmph.” But Tony slid out of his seat and rounded the table to Bucky’s side. “And what are you going to do about it?”

Easily as if he was coaxing their cat up for some pets, he tugged Tony down into his lap. “Thought I’d figure out what it tasted like.”

Tony tried to keep up the pout, but his heart wasn’t in it; it was only a moment before he’d melted against Bucky’s chest and threaded his fingers into Bucky’s hair.

There was always something delicate and remarkable about kissing; how much _trust_. Especially for Tony, who knew he’d been bitten. But he didn’t hesitate, and Bucky all but surged up into it. If there had been a real door, and not a barred gate, Bucky might have asked if Tony wanted to go to bed. Sleeping curled against each other was one of Bucky’s favorite things, and he didn’t intend to forsake it for some mistaken idea of privacy. On the other hand, he didn’t particularly want witnesses, the first time he asked Tony to lay down _with_ him.

When Tony drew back, he was panting for breath, the pout entirely lost to a satisfied smile. “And how did it taste?” he wondered.

“Somewhat better than chocolate,” Bucky decided. 

“High praise,” Tony laughed. “Maybe we should ration it so you don’t run out too fast.”

Bucky scoffed. “A hundred a day wouldn’t be enough--” At which point, he had to kiss Tony again, just to prove it. And because he _could_. Which was reason enough.

Tony didn’t seem to mind at all. He kissed Bucky back with enthusiasm, his hands roving over Bucky’s shoulders and face and back and chest, exploring with those clever fingers, humming happily into Bucky’s mouth each time he managed to drag a fresh response from Bucky.

“You are adorable,” Bucky told him, when they finally split apart, breathing hard and flushed. “In both ways; that you’re quite attractive, and I adore you.” He gave Tony his best puppy-eyes. 

Tony nuzzled along Bucky’s jaw. “I think I like the sound of that. I’m very fond of you, too.” He leaned into Bucky’s chest, checking that he wasn’t putting pressure on the wound, and sighed contentedly. “This is kind of nice, actually. Just like this. Just us, safe and sound.”

"Well, us and the cats and two guards who are trying to pretend they're not listening," Bucky murmured very low, watching over Tony's shoulder. 

“They don’t get a lot of excitement,” Tony said, sounding amused. “They can enjoy a few cheap thrills.”

“But safe,” Bucky concluded. “A thing I ain’t used to.” He wasn’t, not entirely, sure how safe he was. With Tony. 

Caring about Tony.

He was a Nomad.

He’d taken an oath. 

_Cherish the living. Stop the dead._

The dead weren’t stopped; not by a long shot. The swarm out of New Albany was the first swarm in a while, but if they weren’t destroyed, there would be others. The Nomads -- and possibly Tony’s preventative -- were all that stood between the dead and the rest of humanity.

It wasn’t something Bucky could walk away from, and asking someone else to walk that path with him, well. That was asking a lot.

But for now. For now, they could be safe and sound. And mostly alone.

Bucky dragged Tony in for another kiss, and then, laughing, pushed them to their feet, shoved the chair out of the way, and tugged Tony over toward the bed. They wouldn’t do-- well, much. With an audience. But Bucky wanted to lay down and sleep with his arms around Tony, a kitten draped over his foot.

And no zombies for miles.

“Tell me a story,” Bucky said. “My mother used to tell us stories before bed, but I’m afraid I can’t remember any of the ones with a happy ending. Just witches that ate children, and gingerbread men that ran away on broken legs.”

Tony wriggled until he’d wedged himself firmly between Bucky’s thighs and was draped over Bucky’s chest. It was maddening in the best possible way, sparks of arousal that they didn’t have to chase down, could just... relax into and enjoy, a lazy heat like a barely-remembered summer day.

“Bedtime story, hm?” Tony’s fingers stroked lightly up and down Bucky’s arm as he considered it.

“Once upon a time, there was a big castle where a princess lived,” Tony started. “It was a very pretty castle, nestled in the mountains with a big waterfall nearby, and the princess had decorated the whole thing herself, so of course everything was in the best of taste.”

“Princesses having lots of money and supplies for interior decorating,” Bucky murmured. Back when he was growing up, they had a few framed pieces that Ma had bought at the thrift store that didn’t match, either each other or the furniture. Sometimes, when Bucky was a boy, he’d stared at those paintings of people he didn’t know and would never meet.

“Yes, exactly. The princess had a very nice life, most of the time. There was no one to tell her what to do or how to dress, so she walked barefoot through the grass near the castle and waded in the pool at the base of the waterfall. She ate whatever she wanted, too, because she was a princess and she could. One time she ate a whole cake, though the rest of that day wasn’t her favorite day ever.”

“If I had a whole cake,” Bucky said, sticking his nose in Tony’s hair and breathing in his scent. “I’d share with you.”

Tony lifted his head to rub his nose against Bucky’s. “That’s very sweet of you.” He laid back down. “When she wasn’t walking in the grass or redecorating the castle, she taught herself how to play the guitar. She read in a book that princesses were supposed to have fluffy pets like puppies or kittens, but she thought that was silly, so she went out to the pool by the waterfall and caught a snake, and that was her pet. She treated it very well, and it was very fond of her. Sometimes, she wore it around her neck like a necklace.”

Bucky didn’t know much about snakes, but he wasn’t sure they’d make good pets. Mostly, though, they seemed pretty logical creatures. Piss it off, and it’d bite you. Leave it alone, and it was happy to leave you alone.

“One day, just as she was finishing her breakfast, a foul-smelling stench filled the castle, and she heard a loud roar. So she hurried outside to see what it was. On the castle lawn was an enormous dragon, almost bigger than the castle itself. The terrible smell was its breath, and its wings were wider than this whole villa. It had long, sharp teeth, and claws as sharp as knives, and acid dripped from its fangs. As soon as it saw her, it roared again and said, ‘I’m going to eat you up!’”

Bucky pulled Tony in closer. “I’m gonna eat _you_ up.”

Tony laughed, a little throatily. “Looking forward to that, really. But the dragon didn’t mean it in the fun way, and the princess was absolutely terrified. But she was also very clever and very quick, and the next time the dragon roared, she ducked under its wing and ran as fast as she could toward its tail, which she quickly tied to a large, sturdy tree.”

“Bet he didn’t like that too much,” Bucky said. He shifted a little on the bed. The wound still throbbed a bit, especially when he was tired. Tony’s voice was a steady distraction while he let himself settle for sleep.

“He did not,” Tony confirmed. “He roared and raged, but the princess went back into the castle and went up to the very top tower. The dragon tried to fly up to eat her, but with his tail tied to the tree, he couldn’t get off the ground. He called her all sorts of terrible names, but he couldn’t reach her. He demanded that she untie him, and she said, ‘No. You’re being very mean to me, and I don’t like it.’ The dragon started crying.”

“This princess is reminding me more and more of the Captain,” Bucky said. “Little tiny thing, just him against the world.”

Tony’s fingers were stroking a slow, soothing rhythm against Bucky’s arm. “After he’d been stuck there a while, the dragon apologized for being so mean, and asked her again very nicely if she’d please untie him. So since he’d stopped being mean, she untied him, and brought him some tea and cake. Dragons can eat a whole cake without getting an upset stomach, you know.”

Bucky closed his eyes, trying to imagine a dragon drinking tea. He wondered if it used a little china cup and had their pinkie finger sticking out. His sister used to drink pretend tea at her doll’s table like that.

“And after that, they were the best of friends. He came over every weekend for tea and cake.” Tony shifted a little, lifting his head. “Next time, I’ll tell you about the time an evil witch-queen came to the castle to kill the princess and take it over for herself.”

“Bet the dragon ate her,” Bucky said, eyes still closed. He took another few breaths, and then chased sleep into dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Princess Who Saved Herself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55UE7UYvcOw)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tisfan 3023 - S4: Learning to be Loved  
> 27dragons 3033 - K3: Vulnerability
> 
> Smuts ahead! If you like, you can skip to the morning after.

As Tony had predicted, word had spread through the villa that he’d arrived, and by the time he and Bucky were released from quarantine, half a dozen villagers were waiting to claim his services to fix aging machines and improve the boundary protections.

He introduced Bucky to his acquaintances, playing up how Bucky had saved his life at their first meeting, and was almost immediately pulled away to check on the “weird noise” the villa’s generator was making.

“I’d look t’ getting us a horse, except while I know the value of a good mount, ‘fraid I don’t know the value of your services,” Bucky confessed. “Watch you for a bit, get the lay of trade here. An’ see about turning in bounties and some of the supplements we picked up at the Fort.”

“Bounties,” Tony said, “you’re going to want the sheriff.” He pointed down the narrow road. “And you’ll pass the market on the way there, if you want to do any shopping. I’ll check out the generator and we can meet back up at the hotel -- there’s only the one -- for dinner?”

Bucky nodded, watching Tony start disassembling the generator. “A’ight. It’s been a while since I leaned on my reputation, time to see if it still works.” He didn’t strap on the face mask, but he did put his high tech goggles on. They made him look like a particularly angry bug, but Tony decided that wouldn’t be tactful to mention.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” he said. Once it slipped out that Bucky was an actualfacts Nomad and not just some random wanderer, the whole villa would be falling all over themselves just to get a glimpse, Tony was sure.

He watched Bucky walk away -- he didn’t need to watch what he was doing to unfasten bolts, anyway -- and daydreamed a little about getting those muscular thighs wrapped around him.

They’d come at a good time, it turned out -- one of the generator’s belts was old and stretched out, and in another week or so, it would have snapped. The villa didn’t use a _lot_ of electricity, but they made the most of what little the generator gave them.

Parts were getting scarce, which was a problem, but Tony’d had an idea the last time he’d had to replace a belt about using braided horsehair and a combination of tar pitch and ash to make new ones. The trick would be making them exactly the right length. Tony packed the worn-out belt and made a mental note to take it to the villa’s craftsmen and see what they thought of the notion.

When he’d finished that, he was pulled aside to tackle repairs on a variety of devices, mostly simple farming implements, but there was also a washing machine that he’d rigged up a couple of years ago to run on pedal power. By the time he managed to break away with promises to return in the morning, his stomach was growling and the sun was starting to edge toward the horizon.

Several of his friends waved as he walked down the street. A casual wave, a few words, but it seemed, somehow, that he was attracting more attention than usual. That had to be Bucky’s influence, storming through town like he meant to either kill something or buy a cake and he’d make up his mind when he got there.

He made his way to the main square. Bucky wasn’t hard to spot. “You had a productive day?” Tony asked, pulling a rag from his pocket to wipe the grease from his hands.

“If by productive, you mean tellin’ my life’s story about half a dozen times,” Bucky said. “I swear, I’m gonna raid the library the next time I head this way again. Bring a backpack full of old time novels.” He grinned. “Got some supplies. The horse trader don’t want to deal with me, though. It’s _your_ wagon.”

“That’s fair,” Tony said. “She’s probably worried I let Dummy get eaten. Time enough to talk to her later, though. I’m hungry enough to eat a horse, myself.”

“Oh, I’ve taken care of dinner,” Bucky said, smiling shyly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an ancient key, brass rubbed shiny in a few places. Instead of the typical room number affixed to the wooden tag, there was a picture of the moon, carved painstakingly on the wood.

Tony cocked his head, studying it, and then looked up at Bucky. “Where’s that go? I’ve never seen one like that.” He didn’t usually stay at the hotel when he was here; he boarded with the villagers who needed his services, if they had room.

“Back, you know, Before. People used to take trips to exotic locations, see the sights. Not like anyone can do this now. But-- uh, there were special rooms put aside at hotels and stuff. For people who were vacationing after their wedding. They were called honeymoon suites. Obviously, you don’t gotta get married to use it, but-- they’re rooms for romance.” Bucky was flushed so bright red it was a wonder his armor didn’t catch fire.

Sudden arousal set Tony’s whole skin tingling like he’d forgotten to ground before grabbing a live wire. “Oh,” he breathed. “Yeah, okay, that’s... That sounds nice.” Though he had to wonder, really, what a room needed for romance other than a locking door and a bed. “What’s in it?”

“Let’s find out,” Bucky suggested. “ _Dinner_ , at least. They’re gonna send it up.”

“Yeah?” Tony grinned and tucked his arm through Bucky’s. “Yeah, let’s go find out, then.”

The first thing Tony noticed about the room was that everything was geared toward the sensual; the carpet was thick and soft, inviting him to walk barefoot on it. The blankets on the bed were crushed velvet and plush and deep, brilliant red. Rough-woven silk sheets. There were flowers in vases on almost every surface -- the rest of the flat areas were adorned with beeswax candles, sweet smelling and casting rich light across the room. Mirrors threw Tony’s image back at himself from every direction. 

A small room off the side had a wide bath and a basket of rose petals for adorning the water’s surface if they chose to bathe.

“Oh.” Tony reached out to touch the blanket, then snatched his hand back. “I should probably wash up before I touch... anything.”

Bucky nodded. “Probably.” He inspected several bowls of flowers and herbs before adding a few handfuls of sweet smelling salt to the bathwater. “I’ll wash your hair for you, if you want.”

“That sounds wonderful.” Tony started stripping off his clothes, suddenly feeling somewhat shy. Which should be ridiculous -- they’d bathed at the fortress, after all, had already seen each other naked. But now he was aware of Bucky’s eyes on him in a way he hadn’t been before. He shed his pants and kicked off his socks and climbed into the enormous tub quickly. He hissed at the heat; it must have been _just_ filled.

“Leastways, plumbing’s old enough, most of it runs on gravity,” Bucky said. “Admit that I still miss showers, sometimes. Water pressure in the old hotels would last for days.” He peeled out of his shirt and settled in on the side of Tony’s bath, getting his hands wet. “Good soap, here. Smells like flowers. Everything stinks, sometimes, this brave new world of ours. Used to be, everyone wore perfume. Don’t dare, anymore. Not outside of walls. Fragrances’ll attract a zombie like nothing else.”

Tony nodded. Even when a zombie’s eyes and ears had rotted away to uselessness, they seemed to still be able to smell. “We’re not leaving for a few days, at least,” he said. “Go on and make me smell nice.” He took hold of the side of the tub and dipped under the water, just enough to soak his hair through. To warm him up.

The soap smelled like honeysuckle and lavender, like summer, and very vaguely in a way that reminded him of his mother’s sock drawer. Sweet and light. Bucky made a huge lather before rubbing it into Tony’s hair. “Let me know if I catch anything; sometimes little things, like hair, get caught up in the joins.” 

“I’ll speak up,” Tony promised. He leaned back and closed his eyes for a little bit, but almost immediately opened them again, watching Bucky’s face.

Bucky was surprisingly good at this, Tony decided. No water ran into his eyes, no stinging trickle of bubbles made it into his ears. Bucky cradled his head with one hand, keeping most of the weight off his neck while Bucky rinsed out the bubbles, and then ran one finger over his head, eliciting a squeak of fresh-washed hair.

Tony’s scalp tingled with the sensation. He washed up whenever he could, but getting as clean as _this_ was a rare treat. He smiled up at Bucky, reached up to brush damp fingers over Bucky’s cheek. “Feels nice. Thank you.”

“You feel nice,” Bucky said, and he leaned forward to kiss Tony, heated and slow, and almost upside down, his nose rubbing against Tony’s chin as he licked his way into Tony’s mouth.

Tony worked his fingers into Bucky’s hair, holding Bucky where he wanted, prolonging the kiss until he was entirely out of breath. He splashed a little at the surface of the water. “Tub’s big enough for two, if we squeeze a bit,” he offered.

“S’no hardship for me,” Bucky said, then, lowering his chin a little, “Well, maybe a little hardship.” That said, he didn’t hesitate to shuck out of those armor pants. “Scoot up a little, my legs are longer’n yours.”

Tony shuffled forward to make space for Bucky behind him, trying not to slosh too much water over the rim of the tub. “Come on, while the water’s still hot.” He watched as Bucky undressed, letting his gaze linger, enjoying the build of heat in his groin and belly.

“Oh, I think you’ll keep me plenty warm,” Bucky said, but climbed in, settling against the back of the tub, so Tony was wedged between his thighs, leaning back against a broad chest. Bucky stuck his nose in Tony’s wet hair. “And you do smell fine.”

“Well, you picked out the soap,” Tony said, laughing. He picked it up and lifted Bucky’s arm, started working the lather over the skin. His thumbs dug into the muscles, coaxing out knots and strain.

“Sometimes, I think I could get used to town living,” Bucky said. “Never lasts, though. I always get feelin’ like I’m too big inside my skin, gotta get out and see what’s over the next hill. I wonder sometimes if it ain’t part of what they did to us. Wanderlust.” He shifted against Tony, their skin sliding together, made almost effortless with the glide of water and soap, demonstrating a rather different sort of lust, at least for the moment.

Tony hummed. “Vacation first,” he teased. Some careful shifting got him rolled over so they were belly to belly, and he wound his arms around Bucky’s neck, letting the water flow around them. “Nice, long vacation.” He nuzzled up under Bucky’s jaw, testing the soft skin there, and made his way back to Bucky’s ear, licking and nipping, an intimacy that seemed greater than the way their cocks slid together, the sheer _trust_ of Bucky baring his throat to Tony’s teeth.

“Somethin’s nice an’ long, anyways,” Bucky joked, reaching one hand between them, his fingers slightly pruny from the water, and curling it over Tony’s length. He watched, lip caught between his teeth, as he rubbed at Tony, a delicious, almost frictionless glide. “You’re so very lovely.”

“Apparently-- ah!” Tony rocked into the touch. A small wave of water splashed to the floor, and Tony found he didn’t care very much at all. “Apparently Nomads don’t have mirrors.” He slipped his hands below the water, stroking over Bucky’s skin, testing the curve of Bucky’s stomach and hips. “You’re gorgeous.”

“I’m not really my type,” Bucky said. “Kinda arrogant, too big, get in m’own way. Also, I’m a lousy conversationalist. Much rather listen than talk.”

“Well, that makes us perfectly suited,” Tony said, smiling. “I like to talk; you may have noticed. And a little arrogance isn’t so bad when you can actually back it up.” He brushed his lips over Bucky’s, pulling back every time Bucky tried to make it a kiss, teasing, drawing it out before finally surrendering and letting Bucky plunder his mouth. “Take me to bed,” he breathed.

“It will be my pleasure,” Bucky said. They rinsed off and climbed out of the tub, Bucky tossing a towel on Tony’s head and briskly patting down his arm, and taking a desultory swipe at drying the rest of himself off.

Tony scrubbed the excess water out of his hair and all but threw himself on the bed with that plush blanket. The mattress beneath did not disappoint, either, luxuriously soft. “Oh my god I didn’t think beds like this existed anymore.”

“I didn’t think men like you existed anymore,” Bucky said, crawling onto the bed, staring at Tony with aching hunger. He hovered over Tony, propped up on his arms, hips and legs rubbing against Tony’s. He hesitated, as if weighing everything he saw in Tony’s face, and then claimed another kiss. Softly, he said Tony’s name, a merest whisper of breath, lost in the next press of lip. One arm slid under Tony’s back, pulling him up, and Bucky deepened the kiss until they seemed like one person, one mind, trying eagerly to come to some satisfaction. Wet, hot skin and slick kisses and soft caresses and tight embraces. 

Tony’s leg wrapped around Bucky’s hip, trying to pull them closer and closer still. He wanted to pull Bucky right into his skin, into the deepest parts of himself, and stay like that, forever. He had no idea how long they stayed like that, kissing and touching and rocking their bodies together, but when he looked up, the last of the day’s light had disappeared, leaving them with only the candles to see by. The soft, golden glow made Bucky seem ethereal, otherworldly, perfect.

Bucky licked Tony’s bottom lip, tempting him to open, one hand moving down his side to his hip, and then, around the curve of his ass. Swallowing up the little noises that Tony couldn’t help but make, nipping at Tony’s throat. Pressed his mouth against Tony’s shoulder and sucked a soft bruise. Claiming him, marking him. Primitive and wicked and primal.

One finger traced a line over the top of Tony’s cleft. “Will you let me?”

Tony shivered with anticipation. “I’m going to be very disappointed if you don’t.” It had been a while since he’d had someone inside him, but he didn’t think he could wait any longer, not since this thing between them had finally materialized, come out into the open.

The bed was large enough that Bucky rolled them over until they were near the edge, enough to find the supplies he needed in the bedside stand.

“It’s a wonder I’ve been able to think straight at all,” Bucky told him, seriously nibbling on the shell of Tony’s ear, “thinkin’ about you all day, an’ the day before that. Seems I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.” 

“Good,” Tony said. He squirmed around until he was on all fours, head pillowed on folded arms and his ass up high, begging for Bucky’s attention. “I want all your focus right here, for the next little while, anyway.”

“Yeah?” Bucky wondered, oiling his fingers and playing a line down Tony’s crack. “Here? Or, right, there--” He made a little circle, two fingers, over the fluted surface.

Tony gasped and pushed back into the touch. “That’s... that’s a good starting point,” he groaned.

“I agree,” Bucky said, slowly working his way in. He leaned down to lay a line of kisses along Tony’s spine, mouthing at the soft point just over Tony’s hip. He made a few appreciative noises as Tony arched and pushed into it. 

His hands moved on Tony with aching, slow deliberateness. As he breached Tony with one finger, pleasure and heat flared, and then it was a dull burn as Tony struggled to remember how to adjust, how to breathe, how to--

Bucky reached around, circling Tony’s cock with his metal hand, keeping his grip loose and easy, but giving Tony something to rub against. “There you are, that’s-- that’s just lovely, right there.”

It certainly _felt_ lovely. Tony gasped and moaned, rocking forward into that sweet metal hand, warm from the bath and so much skin contact, and then back into the careful press of Bucky’s fingers. It was an endless progression of arousal, up and up and up with no ebb in sight. “Bucky--”

“I’m here, love,” Bucky said, and then, slowly, gently, pulled free. Tony couldn’t help a soft moan of dismay, but he was almost immediately soothed by Bucky lubing him up more, and then pressing the head of his cock against Tony’s entrance. 

“Yes, yes, _yes,_ ” Tony hissed, straining, needing more, needing everything Bucky could give him. “More...”

Bucky put his hands on Tony’s hips, holding him still and steady, and pushed in, slow. A few precious centimeters at a time, until he was fully seated. His hips moved against Tony’s, almost entirely without rhythm, just need, before he settled again. “You’re so _warm_ ,” Bucky marveled. 

Tony couldn’t contain a shiver. “So full,” he managed. It felt as if Bucky was pressing against all of him at once, filling him completely, pushing down against him. “So good, Bucky, sweetheart, please--”

Bucky made a sound, soft, urgent, and he moved, slow, agonizingly slow, until he’d all but pulled out. “God--” he said, and then thrust back in, the slide easier now, as Tony’s body relaxed, stopped fighting the intrusion. “Oh, my god.” His voice was slurred with desire, practically shaking with it, and Bucky rocked him, pulling them together.

Tony thought he could melt under the sheer heat of his desire, under the warmth of Bucky’s affections. His muscles seemed to all turn to putty and he let himself sway with each thrust, each one pushing the crescendo of pleasure a little higher, and then higher still, until Tony felt drugged on it, floating in an inferno of need that was cooled only by the brush of Bucky’s hands over his skin, the slick glide of Bucky inside him. “Bucky, gods, it’s so good, I don’t know if I can-- You’re perfect, that’s exactly perfect, just like that, I--”

Bucky shuddered behind him, his rhythm disintegrating into frenzied thrusting. “Need it, oh, Tony, oh--” He slid one hand around Tony’s waist, the right one this time, and closed his hand around Tony’s cock. “Come on, can you-- want to feel you squeezin’ around me, honey.”

It wasn’t going to take much; they’d spent the last day teasing and kissing and winding each other tighter and tighter. Tony panted and gasped, shivered and shook, utterly overwhelmed by sensation, until it washed through him like a fire, cleansing and somehow cooling as he spilled, his whole body going tense for several long seconds before finally releasing.

Bucky moaned, sweet and low, thrusting in a few more times, and then he followed Tony over the edge, his weight heavy over Tony’s hips, skin wet and hot and sticky against Tony’s back. “God,” Bucky managed. He dropped a kiss in the middle of Tony’s spine. “Ain’t you-- just perfect?”

Tony hummed and let himself drop flat onto the bed, wet spot be damned. “I feel just about perfect,” he mumbled. “You’re fantastic.”

Bucky cuddled up against him, one thigh slung loose over Tony’s hips. “Nap… like ten minutes, and then clean up, or we’ll be very unhappy.”

Tony wasn’t sure he could possibly be unhappy with Bucky at his side, not like this, but all he could manage was a soft hum of acquiescence as he burrowed into Bucky’s warmth.

* * *

Bucky woke up slow, lazy, like swimming through dark waters. It was nice. A comfort, to wake and then drowse, to feel no particular urgency to get up and get on with the day. No patrols to walk, no traps to check, no food to gather. 

He’d slept well, and long. A second bout of lovemaking, in the wee hours of the morning, followed by eating their dinner cold, which had been left for them out in the hall by the door. Talking about nothing in particular until they fell asleep again.

And now, according to Bucky’s internal clock, it was nearly noon.

And he wasn’t going anywhere. Mostly because his lover was wrapped around him like a tenacious bit of kudzu vine. 

Not entirely unusual. Bucky had woken up with Tony laying on him several times before; they had been sharing a small bed in the Fort, it was understandable. But here, there was room to sprawl, and then some.

Bucky still had an armful of cuddly mechanic.

It was… nice.

Tony’s nose twitched, and then his eyelids fluttered, not quite opening but making his long eyelashes dance on his cheek. He made a soft sound, not quite a sigh, and then released his hold on Bucky to stretch heroically, pulling his skin taut over the muscle, making Bucky want to pull him close again to taste it. When he finally relaxed with a groan, his eyes opened. He looked at Bucky and smiled. “Morning, love.”

“I believe we might, in fact, be on the wrong side of the day,” Bucky said. “I can’t remember the last time I spent the entire morning lounging about in bed.” There was a warmth to it, _love_ , a special intenseness. Not just a pet name, or some sweet nothing to say but important.

Love.

“I think we can take the day,” Tony said, curling close again, pillowing his head on Bucky’s shoulder. “I say we’ve earned a little rest, and a little time to just... be together.”

Only a little time, Bucky thought, and he couldn’t help the small shiver that passed through him at that thought. He realized with something akin to dread that he was not going to be able to calmly tell Tony goodbye. And yet, what choice? He was a Nomad. He hunted the dead. Unless he wanted to count Tony among them, it was best to let him go.

“Where will you go, after this?” Bucky wondered. Tony had spoken like he had a route, a set or series of villas that he visited. It might be possible to catch up to him, from time to time. To meet, enjoy each other’s company.

As Tony got older, and Bucky remained the same as he’d been for decades.

Tony hummed thoughtfully. “Not sure. I should go back to Providence and get my horse back. You’ll like Dummy. He’s not too bright, but he likes people. Not entirely unlike the cats, to tell the truth. But after that... No idea. Where do you think we should go?”

_We_.

Bucky leaned up on one arm to look down at Tony, messy-haired and perfect skin, marred here and there by bruises from their exertions. “I… Fury will want to meet you. No doubt of that.” Fury would want to put Tony to work. Maybe-- maybe that would be a good place for Tony, somewhere his genius could be put to use, somewhere his company would be more than valued. “And I want to head to New Albany, now that the swarm’s moved on. If there are survivors, they’ll need help. Maybe piece together what happened. How-- how the virus spread again.”

“Only takes one infected person slipping through the gates,” Tony said soberly. “All right. New Albany, and then on to the _Avenger_? Two hundred miles offshore. You told me.”

Bucky shook his head. “I keep-- doing that. Saying the same things over and over. Maybe my age is starting to catch up with me. Harley-- Harley and Peter, they used to say… I was _superannuated_. Supes, they sometimes called me, for short.”

Tony chuckled a little. “Who’s that? Harley and Peter? You haven’t mentioned them before.”

“Boys,” Bucky said. “Just kids, they were… they were _just kids_. Peter was tallest, his head was only an inch under the tunnel ceiling, he had to duck through the joins. Everyone else could just walk. Except me. Too tall to be there, we were so slow, damn it. They kept waiting for me, even though--” Even though Bucky had insisted they go. He was wounded, he was dizzy and disoriented. But they wouldn’t leave him, wouldn’t leave him to hold off the swarm, wouldn’t leave him to die in those stinking tunnels, and so he’d forced himself onward, hoping to all the gods that never were that he could _keep going_.

Tony was frowning, looking up at Bucky. He reached up, brushed his knuckles down Bucky’s cheek. “Sweetheart? What are you-- What’s going on?”

“New Albany,” Bucky said, suddenly. “I was _there_. When the outbreak-- I was there. I-- fell. Have you ever been there? There was a grand trestle over the river, so high up. They thought it would keep the zombies out. And they burned it, but it was too late. I was… I was too late, and I fell, all the way into the water.”

Tony shook his head. “No one could survive a fall like that,” he whispered. “A dream, maybe, or--”

Bucky nodded. The memories, they weren’t really memories, were they? Not crisp and clear, but muddy, foggy, like in the moments after a nightmare, and you tried desperately to hold the scraps of the dream together, to make it make sense, but there was no sense, was there? “I suppose not, but-- still, they seem. Like people I once knew. Cared about. I-- I was thinking how strange it is, to care so much about people, after so many years on my own and never really worrying about it. But then-- now there’s you, and I keep looking around for them, like they… they would be happy for me?”

“Of course they would,” Tony said. “Your friends, the people who love you, they want you to be happy.”

Bucky chuckled, a little uneasy. “You sure you want to travel with me, love? I’m apt to turn into an old man and need you to feed me gruel and tell me my name, not too much longer.”

“We’ll see who’s doddering first,” Tony teased, and leaned up to catch Bucky’s mouth in a quick kiss. “But if it comes to that, then it would be my pleasure.”

Bucky brushed over Tony’s forehead, pushing the messy curls aside. “I am happy, you know,” he said. “For, oh, for the longest time in forever. Right here, in your arms.”

“Good.” Tony looked relaxed and soft and content. “I’m happy, too. I love you.”

Time was a linear thing, Bucky knew that as well as anyone. That the world kept turning, no matter what. Back in his day, they’d feared humans would destroy the planet, but the planet was fine. Kept right on spinning, day after day.

But he was also positive, in that moment, that time stopped.

Stood still.

His heart clenched with a sweet, impossible pain. He couldn’t seem to speak past the lump in his throat, couldn’t form words around the lack of air in his lungs. All he could do was lean down and claim the kiss that Tony was so clearly offering, making a gift of it for both of them.

Finally, when he drew back, Bucky smiled. “Is that what this is? I wasn’t sure.”

“That’s what this is,” Tony said. Certain and calm. His head tipped a little. “You okay?”

“Never better,” Bucky said, and that might even have been true. “I love you, too.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tisfan 3023 - T2: Animal  
> 27dragons 3033 - R2: Attacked by a Creature

Almost three weeks in the Valcor’s Island villa, to repair the wagon, to take as many contracts as Tony could fix or improve, to buy or trade for supplies, and to pack. They’d plotted it out carefully on the map; west to New Albany to see what they could find, south to Providence and pick up Dummy, and then they should be able to get to the _Avenger_ before the winter set in and they could stay there for the season.

Provided, of course, that nothing went drastically wrong. 

Bucky had laughed about that. “We’ve got another few weeks, given recent weather patterns, for it to actually get cold enough near DC for snow.”

“The wagon moves slow,” Tony had pointed out, “even with a horse to pull it. You sure you don’t want to winter here and go to New Albany in the spring?”

“Want, no,” Bucky said. “But if there are survivors at all in New Albany, they’re gonna have a hard time making it through the winter. And we’ll move even slower with refugees. More like a mobile buffet. But what can we do? I can’t leave them to die out there.”

Tony sighed. “You’re right about that.” They’d stocked up on blankets and ration bars and as much medicine as the villa could spare. It might be wishful thinking, that they’d find any survivors at all, but they had to be prepared.

They’d also stocked up on weapons and improved the electric perimeter fence that Tony kept on the wagon most of the time, and he’d found some time to tinker with Bucky’s shock sticks so they’d discharge faster and not drain their batteries so quickly.

When they were ready to leave, the villa gathered near the gate to see them off. So few people ever left a town, it was almost like a carnival. People waved and threw flowers and cheered.

“Hail, the conquering hero,” Bucky murmured. He was riding one of the horses, jogging easily alongside the wagon and annoying the wagon’s team, but that was okay. The poor dumb animals probably hadn’t ever been far outside the walls, either, and they were a bit nervous. Better to have them jumpy now, when they weren’t in any danger, than have them causing a ruckus later.

“Be nice,” Tony muttered back. He waved cheerfully as they passed through the gates, and then paused to watch them close again, heard the heavy bar fall into place. “On the road again.”

“I’m nice,” Bucky protested, looking mock-hurt. “You said so, last night. At least, I think that’s what you said, between all the swearing and crying my name.”

Tony’s neck heated, but he shot Bucky an exasperated look anyway. “I should hope you’re not nice to the villagers like you’re nice to me.”

“Definitely not,” Bucky said. He kicked his mount and jogged a circle around the wagon, and when he came back, he was carrying some of the flowers that the people had thrown. “For you, I think, more than for me. I think I scare them a little.”

“You’re a little intimidating,” Tony said. “Nomads are _legends_ ; no one expects them to be _real_.” He took the flowers that Bucky handed him and leaned over to tuck one behind Bucky’s ear. “There, now you’re not so scary.”

“If I have to kick someone’s ass, you’re gonna have to hold my flower,” Bucky joked. He leaned in and stole a kiss, then, “I’m gonna run a sweep, about a half mile out. Your wagon makes for an appealing target; they might run for you and not notice me.”

Chances were good there were not, in fact, any zombies in a few miles around the villa -- any that close would have come and attempted the walls and bridges before now -- but Tony could see the benefit of keeping in the habit. It probably was habit, for Bucky.

“Got it,” he said. “I’ll yell if I see anything close by.” He watched Bucky fade into the brush that lined the path, and then clucked at the horses, soothing their nervousness.

It became clear by the time they stopped for camp that evening that having Bucky scouting was allowing them to move much faster than Tony usually travelled, not having to be so cautious as he took the wagon into blind curves or through the remains of old towns, knowing that Bucky’d already cleared the area.

They made camp next to what had once been an old warehouse, putting a wall behind them for safety. It was sheltered from the wind, clear sightlines all around them. There were rows of rusting cars in the lot, providing some small bit of perimeter. Any zombie would be unlikely to be stealthy, climbing over one of those.

Bucky did a bit of scouting through the area and came back with a few thin mylar blankets that had been in someone’s glove box.

“Oh, excellent!” Tony snapped off a few windshield wipers and used them to arrange one blanket on the far side of their fire, blocking most of the light from distant viewers and reflecting the heat back toward them. The other, he added to their own combined bedroll, sandwiched between layers of wool.

When he’d finished that, he went to check on the horses, making sure they were carefully tethered and had plenty of grass in reach. He’d give them a little grain before they went to bed, but it was best if the animals could forage as much as possible.

He got back to find Mama Cat crouched near their bedroll, messily disemboweling a rat. “She was tryin’ to eat it on our bed, but I wouldn’t have none of that,” Bucky informed him. “But at least she’s earning her keep. Bold thing, I never seen a rat walk right up to a person before. I guess it’s been so long, they don’t really know what we are anymore.”

“You’d think they’d still recognize that we’re bigger than they are,” Tony said. He watched for a moment, amused, as Hunter stalked and pounced the rat’s tail, which twitched every time Mama took a bite. “Please tell me you found something to cook and that we don’t have to eat rat bars for dinner.”

Bucky laughed. “Not just yet,” he said, and displayed the things he’d found during a day’s forage. Three flat tins of fish -- sardines, Bucky called them -- a jar of jam, the label old and moldy, but the contents inside should still be good. A good sized basket of fresh berries, and some rolls that he had from the villa. 

“You’re a wonder and a marvel,” Tony said, sitting on the bedroll.

“Also, earning my keep,” Bucky said. The little fish were oily and salty and Tony wasn’t sure he liked them, but eaten on the bread, they weren’t too bad. The cats seemed to enjoy licking out the remains of the tin, at least.

Bucky pulled back the bedroll, turned down their lantern to its dimmest setting. It wasn’t good to wake up in complete darkness, when seconds might count. The animals would probably alert them, though, if something wandered too near their camp.

Of course, given Hunter’s enthusiasm for pouncing, a something wandering in could be a mouse.

Tony took the horses their grain and made sure the electrified perimeter was secure, then came back, crawling under the blankets and curling into Bucky’s warmth.

Bucky slid his guns right over their pillow, in easy reach, and stretched, feet poking at the blankets.

Which tempted Hunter to turn away from the dead rat to stare, his entire bottom lashing back and forth.

“I think you’re about to become prey,” Tony said, amused.

“Hmmm?” Bucky moved his foot again, like he had no idea he was being watched intently. Hunter could not resist, pouncing onto the bed and grabbing hold of the bed mouse. Bucky moved again and the kitten jumped backward, puffing up fiercely.

“We’ve been attacked!” Tony proclaimed. “By a vicious and terrible creature!”

“Protect me or surely, I will perish,” Bucky said, all swoony and over dramatic.

“Stay back, monster!” Tony pointed imperiously at Hunter, who stepped forward to sniff his finger, and lick off some lingering oil from the sardines.

“A for effort, D for actual efficiency,” Bucky judged. 

Tony sniffed. “I saved your foot from certain annihilation, and this is the thanks I get?”

“You’ve saved my life and my honor, I suppose I can offer you my hand in marriage,” Bucky said. He twisted his wrist and then -- in fact -- took the metal hand off, leaving an attachment join sticking out of his wrist and offering the suddenly unmoving prosthetic to Tony.

Tony froze, staring at the hand. He hadn’t realized the prosthetic could break down like that. It was... unnerving, to say the least. “What the fuck...”

Bucky laughed. “Okay, the look on your face was worth every bit of that,” he said. “Yeah, it--” He tipped it, showing Tony the internal mechanisms. “Originally for maintenance, but it’s come in super handy when some idiot tries to cuff me to a wall.”

Tony hummed. “I could see some benefit to having you cuffed to a wall.”

“Pretty sure that wasn’t what Hydra had in mind. I didn’t stick around to find out.” Bucky twisted the hand back onto his stump, making a face, and then wiggling the fingers. “That always feels so weird when it comes back online.”

“How does it work?” Tony wondered. “Where’s it draw the power from?”

Bucky tapped his chest, just to the left side of his sternum. “Non-nuclear miniature reactor battery.”

“What, really?” Tony sat up and put his hand over Bucky’s chest. “Why isn’t this a thing everywhere? It could change so much! The villas could power their safe-zones, we could have roads with walls, we could--”

“Fun as the idea sounds, I ain’t gonna let you open me up an’ take it out. I don’t really know how it works, there’s… I don’t know. The schematics might be on file, but I don’t think anyone but Howard actually knew how it worked. He called it an arc reactor.”

Damn it, of course it had been Howard’s creation. Tony chewed on his thumbnail. “If your Fury doesn’t have them, maybe I can convince the ‘tank to let me back into their files. He might have left something there.”

“I can’t think of anyone else I’d trust with it,” Bucky said. “So I guess if I ever need an upgrade, you’ll be the man to ask.”

“I would love to get my hands on you,” Tony said. “Any part. Every part.”

“Yeah, yeah, put your money where your mouth is, Stark,” Bucky said, pinning him to the ground with sudden eagerness.

“If I had any money, I certainly would. Why don’t I put my mouth where my mouth is?” Tony wrapped his arms around Bucky’s neck, rolling his spine to press their bodies together.

“I am one hundred percent behind this plan,” Bucky said, and rolled over onto Tony, straddling his thighs.

Which apparently put his backside in a tempting position, because he suddenly had a cat full of pointy bits scaling up the blankets.

“Shit, what the-- Dumb thing, get off!” Tony tried to nudge Hunter down, but the kitten was having none of it.

Bucky laughed, plucked the kitten off the blankets again… “He’s all riled up now. You got any string or somethin’?”

Tony grumbled; he’d wanted to pursue that line of discussion, not pause to entertain a frisky kitten. But he dragged his kit a little closer and pulled out a length of rawhide string. “Here, see if he’ll play with that.”

Bucky wiggled the string around until Hunter pounced on it, then tossed it to the far side of their camp. The little kitten chased after it gleefully, throwing up shadows from the fire, pouncing and spitting. “He’s a baby,” Bucky said, indulgent. “It’s cute. And-- so are you, especially when you’re all pouty like that. Gonna kiss that look right off your face.”

Which he proceeded to do.

And this time, they were not bothered by a return of the kitten.

* * *

It did happen, sometimes, that Bucky came across other Nomads out on the trail. It wasn’t even that terribly unusual. Nomads went where the zombies were, the heavily infected areas.

He knew most of the other Nomads, had fought with them in the early days, learned to trust each other with their lives and sanity.

So it was not entirely unusual for Bucky to come across zombies that had been permanently put down. Sometimes a Nomad would burn the bodies, just in case. He knew a few who would bury them in mass graves. But mostly, they were just left where they fell, each kill as unique as the Nomad who accomplished it.

He knew the way Steve would decapitate them with his shield, the way Natasha always went for the brain stem.

This-- this was nothing like he’d seen before.

The zombies were in heaps, almost like someone had stacked them. Heads on one side, bodies on the other. “That might be the most disgusting sight I have ever seen.”

This was new. 

“Who did this?” Bucky wondered. “This wasn’t a Nomad.”

“Who else would kill so many zombies?” Tony returned, slightly distracted by the horses’ unease at the smell of so much rotting flesh. “It’s so... methodical.”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said, shaking his head. “But-- I can’t decide if I want to thank them, or make sure they never, ever find us.”

“We can leave tribute and then cover our tracks?” Tony suggested. The muscles of his arms bulged as he reined in the team, trying to keep them from shying at every shift of the wind. “Look at that. These piles are almost _mathematically_ precise.”

“Someone’s been eating their Psycho Wheaties,” Bucky said. “I can’t imagine… wanting to put my hands on zombies long enough to stack them like cordwood.” He knew his voice was getting somewhat higher pitched as the precise nature of the display disturbed him. “I mean, there’s risk, and then there’s suicide. You can get the virus by accident, fucking around with the dead. It’s seriously ill-advised.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Tony stood up on the wagon seat to gain a little better vantage. “They look like they stretch off in that direction.” He pointed. “Maybe we should take a little extra time to go around the area?”

“Yeah, that-- sounds like a wise idea. I don’t know what this is, and I don’t like shit I don’t understand.” Bucky hadn’t thought there was anything new under the sun. What the hell could be worse than zombies? Although whatever it was, it had, in fact, cut a hell of a path through the swarm. He should probably be grateful. But looking at the stacks of bodies-- he really wasn’t.

“Yeah.” Tony pointed. “That way? You can do a quick sweep, see if the ground looks like it’ll carry the wagon. At least there’s probably not many zombies out there to worry about.”

Bucky nodded. “Gimme Mama-cat,” he said, reaching out for the little travel-pack Tony kept tinkering with -- he’d installed a clear plastic porthole for the cat to look out of. “She can tell me if there’s anything else around.”

“Yep.” Tony pulled the pack out of the compartment where he kept it, and Mama-cat jumped up onto the seat beside him, yelling her enthusiasm. He helped Bucky put it on, settled the cat into the cradle of its base, and tugged Bucky around for a fast, hard kiss. “Be careful.”

“I’m almost always careful,” Bucky joked. He was whistling past the graveyard and he knew it. The way Tony clung to him for a moment let him know that Tony knew it, too.

Something had happened. 

The question was… what?

His first thought was some sort of animal, maybe, except why would an animal tear bodies apart? And no animal -- aside from maybe crows -- were going to stack things up. 

Also, as Bucky searched around him, making sure the wagon could fit between trees, there was no sign of foraging or fur, no tracks or traces.

He kept finding indents in the ground, though. Not tracks, not-- precisely.

He’d seen a few guys, decades ago now, who’d worn a kind of combat armor, or remodeled construction vehicles to serve as armor or weapons. This was-- more like that.

Although not quite that, either.

“I’ll tell ya what, Mama,” he said to the cat. “This is creeping me out rather a lot.”

Mama didn’t deign to reply, but she sat up in the pack, and then stood up, propping her front paws on Bucky’s shoulder as she stared intently back the way they’d come. Her tail thumped against his back hard as it lashed. She’d spotted _something_.

Bucky adjusted his seat, turned his mount. He couldn’t see shit in all these trees; pulled out his tactical goggles. Movement trackers on, high contrast-- nothing, nothing and more nothing. “You smell something out there?”

There was a sound, then, like a tree giving way and falling after a heavy storm, and layered on top of that, almost too faint even for Bucky’s enhanced hearing-- “ _Bucky!_ ”

Bucky swore and kicked his mount, wincing just a little as Mama-cat decided that claws were the better option for holding on. He didn’t bother to yell back. Tony would know he was coming, and whatever was out there-- well, surprise was probably not an option on a galloping horse, but--

It took him less than a quarter of the time to make it back as it had taken him to go out, but he wasn’t entirely sure what he was seeing when he got back.

They looked like-- men in armor, with green, flowing cloaks. Old-timey knights.

But strong-- even as Bucky made it back, one of them hefted the wagon, while another one tried to pluck Tony out from under the dubious shelter. 

The horses had either torn their traces or Tony had cut them, which was good for them, since the -- the thing, whatever the hell it was -- practically threw the wagon across the clearing.

Bucky drew his rifle, lining up a shot at the back of one of the men’s neck.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Pull the trigger between heartbeats.

The shot didn’t miss... but it ricocheted harmlessly off the metal.

Tony dodged the grasping thing’s hand and bolted toward the upturned wagon, using the broken cover frame to jump nimbly up onto the side. He had something in his hand -- not a gun or a shockstick... A screwdriver, maybe?

“Tony, what the _hell_?” Bucky yelled, maybe a little screechy, perhaps. He shot it again, which got the thing’s attention and it started toward him. It was wearing a mask with a slit for a mouth and square holes for eyes.

“They’re machines!” Tony yelled back. The one pursuing him charged, and Tony jumped at the last second, grabbing it around the neck and using his momentum to swing himself around to its back. He drove the tip of the screwdriver into the join of the head and neck. “Got to find the power source!”

“It don’t look like a machine to me,” Bucky shouted. He’d seen movies, back in the day. Science fiction. But even advanced robots had always looked _fake_ somehow. These looked like real people. Just terrifyingly invulnerable people. “Why the hell are they attacking us?” 

He adjusted his goggles, then got the fuck out of the way, because it was damn fast. Scan, scan-- regular heat signature, but in no way a _human_ heat reading. “Check the lower back, got a lot of heat coming from there--”

“Got it!” He lost sight of Tony for a moment, too busy avoiding his own attacker, though he got an impression of wrestling, punctuated by occasional vehement cursing.

Then there was a loud static sound, like the discharge of a shockstick, and a startlingly loud clatter as Tony’s opponent crumpled to the ground. “There’s a little notch right at the base of the spine,” Tony told him. “Try to aim for that.”

“Right,” Bucky said with clenched teeth. Because the damn-- whatever the fuck it was -- was going to just offer up its back to Bucky’s rifle.

He dumped the pack, ignoring Mama-cat’s displeased yowl, and charged, yelling and swinging his rifle like a madman. The machine raised a hand as if to ward him off, and Bucky dropped, hit the ground and rolled, using his momentum to knock the thing off its feet. Ow. It was like charging a goddamn _car_. 

But it was down. Bucky raised his rifle and used the stock to smack the thing in the face, rolling it over.

He skinned his pistol and aimed, right at the base of the spine.

The last thing he remembered was a bright flash, right before--

_\--darkness._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tisfan 3023 - R5: Anxiety  
> 27dragons 3033 - R4: Abducted

When the thing attacking Bucky _exploded_ , Tony’s entire heart seemed to freeze, icy tendrils of fear leaching into every limb. He couldn’t have saved Bucky from the plague only to lose him to _this_.

He dove through the billowing smoke and acrid fumes, futilely trying to wave them away and coughing as he tried to drag in enough breath to call out. “Bucky! Bucky, honey, tell me you’re okay!”

Nothing. And as the smoke cleared, Tony found Bucky in a crumpled heap on the ground, a dozen feet from where he’d been standing.

Tony dashed across the space, frantic. “Bucky! Oh gods, sweetheart, no, you have to be okay, you _have_ to!” He fell to his knees in the dirt and reached for Bucky’s outflung hand.

Warm, still warm, and... Tony felt frantically around the wrist, seeking the soft underside, and then slumped in relief when he felt a pulse, weak and fluttery, but steady. “Okay. Okay, hang in there, honey, you’re going to be okay.”

Tony prodded gently along Bucky’s side and back to make sure nothing was broken -- well, that rib was probably cracked, but that was survivable, if unpleasant -- and carefully rolled Bucky onto his back.

He sat and watched for a moment as Bucky’s chest moved, up and down, with each breath, reassuring himself that his lover was still alive.

The shifting wind brought him another whiff of that strange, acrid smoke. Tony kissed the back of Bucky’s hand. “Okay, you just. You just rest a minute.” He got up to see what he could learn, and to start gathering the supplies that had been tossed out when the machine-thing had thrown the wagon.

Hunter was exceptionally unhelpful, trying to climb up things Tony was moving, pouncing, and generally getting in the way. Mama-cat, on the other hand, had curled up on Bucky’s chest, purring so loud that Tony could hear her from across the clearing.

Eventually, Tony got most of his gear gathered into a pile, except a few bits and bobs that Hunter was chasing around. He checked on Bucky, but Bucky didn’t seem inclined to wake up yet. So Tony scratched Mama’s ears a little and then went back over to examine the mess of the wagon. One wheel was broken. It would be easier to fix like this, lying on its side.

And then Tony would have to rig some kind of pulley or block-and-tackle to get the wagon righted again.

Maybe Bucky would wake up before then. Bucky was strong enough to tip the wagon himself, if Tony provided some leverage to keep it from sliding around.

Hunter issued an unearthly howl, like the soul of a demon raised to inhabit a kitten, turned into a furpuff the size of a melon, and backed up under Tony’s legs, hissing and spitting.

“Who dares to interfere?” a deep voice demanded, stomping into the clearing. Like the two machines that Tony and Bucky had dispatched, it was tall, clad in armor, and wore a green flowing cloak.

Behind it, two-- three-- six. A dozen more.

Tony tested his grip on the hammer he was holding, and straightened to face the new intrusion. The others hadn’t _talked_ , though. “Not interfering with anything,” Tony said. “They attacked me. I just defended myself.” No sense calling attention to Bucky while Bucky was still unconscious.

There was no way that a faceless man like that could have expressions, but Tony was almost positive that, behind that silvery mask, an eyebrow had gone up in a curious stare. “You’re _alive_.”

“...Yes?” Tony squinted through the eyeholes of the mask. “Are you?”

“We are alive. We are Von Doom,” the man intoned. “ _You_ are trespassing. This is Doom’s domain.”

Tony was torn between the desire to get as far away from this obviously insane would-be tyrant, and the need to learn more about the mechanical men. “Okay, sorry about that, didn’t know,” he said as calmly as he could. “Just give me an hour or so to fix my wagon and find my horses, and I’ll be on my way.”

Doom appeared to consider it a moment. Or perhaps he was just posing dramatically. It was hard to tell. “You will not,” he said, finally. “You are on Doom’s land. You belong to Doom, now.”

“Buddy, I don’t belong to anyone,” Tony said, tightening his hold on the hammer. It was a bluff, though; there was no way Tony could destroy a dozen of those man-machines by himself.

“You will discover differently,” Doom said. He gestured to two of the man-machines behind him. “Bring him. And the other. If this one struggles, kill the other.”

Son of a bitch. So much for hoping Bucky had gone unnoticed.

With Bucky still unconscious and hostage to Tony’s good behavior, he had no choice but to lay down his hammer and let the machines prod him along.

It wasn’t very far off the road, maybe forty minutes or so, when they came to an honest-to-Einstein castle. Complete with a moat and a drawbridge and thick walls. 

“Our Doombots constructed a magnificent home,” Von Doom announced. “Safe, within these walls, we have been working to eradicate the scourge from the land. And we will then receive the praise and worship of a gratefully freed people.”

“Not if your ‘doombots’ kill them all first,” Tony muttered. “How did you even _make_ them? This is, this is pre-plague tech, here.”

“Exponentially,” Doom said. “Each doombot is capable of replicating itself. Each generation, we increase our numbers. It takes time, patience. Materials. And we must constantly stop the work to deal with threats to our borders. But we persevere. We understand _you_ are a craftsman of no small skill.” 

Tony did not quite stumble over his own feet in surprise, but it was close. “What makes you think that? How do you even know who I am?”

“The doombots seek out pre-plague technology, bring it back here, to New Latveria,” Doom said. “We have seen you before, in old reports. You will be a great and prized servant, Mr. Stark. Come, let us show you the workshop.”

What even the _fuck_. “I’m not--” Tony bit his tongue. Arguing with Doom would only get Bucky hurt. Maybe the workshop would have something useful in it that he could use to free them. “Fine, show me the workshop.”

True to his word, Doom had a workshop. Several doombots -- all unnervingly identical -- worked on crafting and shaping more of the doombots. There were dozens of them, unmoving, in display cases around the room. Even more wandered the castle, doing domestic chores.

A small army of doombots, at least from what Tony could see and count. At least _two hundred_. How long had this been going on and no one had-- well, perhaps no one had been left alive to report it.

“Impressive,” Tony said, because it was. “You don’t worry that they’ll turn on you? That they’ll introduce errors into a new generation that could prove dangerous?” Like, say, the inability to tell a zombie from a living person.”

“Our coding is infallible,” Doom said. “We are their master, we are-- Von Doom.”

Bucky shifted a little in the grip of one of the bots. “To--” he coughed, groaned, then “where-- Tony?”

“I’m here,” Tony said quickly, turning to take Bucky’s hand. “I’m here, it’s... I’ll explain later.”

“Doom has matters to attend,” Doom said. “You will stay here. You will familiarize yourself with the workshop. Doom will send food. And items to repair. You will repair the items, or there will be no more food.”

With a dramatic swirl of his green cape, Doom stormed out of the workshop. There was a distinct thunk as the lock slammed home.

The rest of the doombots seemed to show no interest in Tony or Bucky, going about their tasks with mindless intensity. 

Tony watched them warily, then helped Bucky over to a table that would have to serve as a bed, for now. “Are you okay? That doombot exploded right in your face.” He started patting Bucky down, checking again for broken bones or torn skin.

“Doom-- doombot? What--” Bucky twisted his neck a few times, then coughed again. “Seem’t have inhaled somethin’ unpleasant. Skin feels-- mild burns and abrasions. Chest hurts. Mild concussion, maybe. Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine. A few bumps and scratches. The guy who made the--” He gestured at the diligent workers on the other side of the room. “The mechanicals. Says his name is Doom. He calls them doombots. Of course, he also talks like he’s plural and has every intention of kidnapping me and holding you hostage to my behavior, so I think I can safely say he’s completely insane.”

“Fuck, there’s so _many_ of them,” Bucky said, looking around. “Keep your head down, we’ll… we’ll figure something.”

Tony nodded. “At least until you’re feeling better.” He leaned in to nuzzle at Bucky’s neck. “I was so worried.”

“We’re okay, babe,” Bucky said. “As long as we’re alive, we got hope, we got each other.”

“Yeah.” Tony took a deep breath, taking comfort in the warm scent of Bucky’s skin, then drew back reluctantly. “I’m going to take a look around. I’ll need to know what’s what if we’re going to play along for a while. And maybe I can find something useful.”

“Yeah, you-- you do that.” He coughed again. “Wish I could help. But best to spend my time healin’ right now. When we have a plan, I’ll need t’be ready. Tony-- I love you.”

Tony leaned in to kiss Bucky gently. “I love you, too. We’ll get through this.”

Despite Doom’s assurance that his programming was faultless, Tony found many of the bots were engaged in meaningless, or actively harmful tasks. They _looked_ productive, but some of the bots were completely non-functional.

Small storage rooms of broken parts showed that many of the bots were incapable of walking without tearing their own joints apart. 

And none of them spoke. They watched Tony, and sometimes Bucky, with intensity. But they didn’t talk, or respond to questions. Although after some trial and error, Tony discovered they did obey orders, to some limited degree. If Tony phrased it carefully, a suggestion like, “I require a hammer,” would get one or two of the bots to either show him where the tools were located, or bring him one.

Unfortunately, “I require that the door be opened,” didn’t work.

The doombots didn’t object to being studied, themselves, which was good. If they were ever going to escape, Tony would need to find a way to disable them all. Preliminary review didn’t turn up any obvious solutions, so he turned his attention to the rest of the workroom.

Doom had functioning _computers_ , which Tony hadn’t seen since he was a boy. Their systems were unfamiliar, but once he’d played around a little while, he found the logic of them.

There were heaps of old circuit boards, waiting to be repurposed, and enough electronic parts for Tony to build a radio tower, if he thought there was anyone out there able to receive the signal.

Some few hours later, Doom returned. At least, Tony thought it was Doom. He was accompanied by two of the bots, who each carried silver trays with domes to seal in heat. “Your dinner,” Doom said. “You have familiarized yourself with the workspace. Tomorrow, the real work begins.”

“We need a bed,” Tony said. “I’m not a robot, I need real rest.”

How a faceless person in a mask could look puzzled, Tony had no idea, but Doom managed it. “We will… arrange one.” He turned, gave orders to the bots to clear out one of the storage rooms to be converted into their living quarters.

Tony watched that for a moment, then turned to the food. He was starving; even a rat bar would look good now.

He’d never seen food like this before. Three slabs of unidentifiable meat, surrounded by oily, fragrant gravy, a tiny blot of something that might have been mashed potatoes, uniformly cut beans, and a little square of chocolate. And all of it contained in a paper tray. Bucky’s was exactly the same.

“It’s a TV dinner,” Bucky breathed. “Where the hell did-- this is… this is _pre-plague_ mass-produced food. Jesus, how old is this shit?”

Tony shook his head. “Decades, at least.” He leaned forward and sniffed delicately, but it didn’t smell spoiled or rotten. “Seems safe enough.” He picked up the fork and speared a corner off the meat to taste it. It had been ground and then pressed into shape, and it had a strange aftertaste that Tony wasn’t sure he liked. But the gravy tasted of onions and was dotted with mushrooms, and matched the meat reasonably well. “It’s not bad.”

“You think we’ll see the real guy again?” Bucky wondered. “It’s so weird, I can’t imagine being so boring as to surround yourself with robots that look exactly the same.”

“I’m not sure, but I think so,” Tony said. “If nothing else, we probably make a more entertaining audience for his raving than the bots.” The beans were limp and terrible, but Tony ate them anyway.

The bots finished clearing out the room and two more brought in a pile of green cloaks, ostensibly to sleep on and under. A roll of plastic that one of them plugged into an outlet on the wall and it-- inflated into a bed.

Tony watched it inflate with surprise. “Well that’s... convenient.” He glanced up and around, as if he could see through the walls to the rest of the castle. “Place this big, you’d think there would be some actual beds in it, though. Maybe it’s all doombot storage.”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “None of it makes sense. Like something out of a bad dream. Tomorrow, I’ll see about gettin’ us out of this room. For now, come, lay down.” 

That wasn’t even any less creepy, since two of the bots took up a guard position on either side of the door, one facing in, and one facing out. The guards didn’t speak, and they didn’t move much, but it was very obvious that they were watching, intently.

Tony watched them nervously for a few minutes, but they stood unmoving. Uneasily, Tony re-settled the cloaks over them, then curled into Bucky’s side and let himself drift into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

Bucky drifted in and out of sleep -- every time he woke up, the bots were still staring at them. It was completely creepy.

And his head felt weird. Swimmy and stuffed full of wet cotton. Memories floated around, bits and pieces of them.

_\--the tunnel was wider here, no longer the old sewer system but some sort of underground cavalcade. It was a relief to be able to spread out, to stretch his back. Made him more paranoid, though. Anything could be waiting for them in the darkness._

“ _Bucky,” the girl said, the little girl, the one with white hair and the pink smock, “where are we?”_

“ _Nuclear fallout shelter,” Peter said, holding up a flickering lighter to the wall, reading the signs and diagrams there. “You think we can get in?”_

“ _If we can, you kids are staying until I get back with help,” Bucky told him. “Safest places in the world. Plenty of food, air. Water. You’ll all be fine, I promise.”_

_Hoped to god he could keep that promise--_

Bucky jerked awake again, all but mewling at the pain in his head.

“Mm?” Tony’s nose scrunched and then he blinked awake. “Bucky? Y’kay?”

“Too much head trauma,” he whined, screwing his eyes as closed as he could manage, scrambling to pull one of the cloaks over his head. “Feel like everything’s shifting around in there.”

Tony propped himself up on an elbow, which made the mattress shift oddly under them. “You don’t feel sick or anything, do you? I didn’t think you had too much damage to your head, but I should have checked closer.”

“I dunno,” Bucky said. “Just-- I know, just dreams, but they seem so real, like something that happened, that actually happened and I wake up an’... I can’t remember.”

Tony tugged the cloak away from Bucky’s face and ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair, checking for bumps. “Don’t fight it,” he advised. “You’ll remember eventually, I’m sure.” He glanced at their robotic guards. “Wonder whether it’s morning yet. I don’t think I’m going back to sleep; might as well get up and get working, see what else I can find. You get some more rest. It’ll help you heal.”

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky murmured. “Be safe. I-- we’ll figure this out.”

The doombot wordlessly accompanied Tony back into the workshop, its mate staying to stand guard over Bucky. At some point during the night, two crates had been brought down to the ‘shop, filled with broken robot bits, malfunctioning motivators and busted joints. The doombot pointed imperiously to the box. 

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Tony said. He pulled a couple of pieces out of one crate, turned them over in his hands, and then set them on the nearest workstation. “Got to get some parts.” He threw Bucky a wink as he passed their makeshift bedroom, to all appearances eager to start work.

Bucky almost hoped it was a nightmare-- that would make sense. The whole thing, evil killer robots, leftover fascists from another era. All of it. He wasn’t quite sure he could sleep again, but--

\--he swam upward from sleep to the sound of Tony cursing, low but fervent, colorful and creative.

“What?”

Tony looked around, checking the positions of the doombots in the workshop, and beckoned Bucky closer. He’d scavenged one of the old computers from somewhere, and the eerie blue light of its monitor on his skin made him look like a ghost.

Bucky didn’t quite groan, but getting up was almost the last thing he wanted to do. He’d take it -- he’d certainly done worse things, but sometimes voluntarily getting out of bed was just so _hard_.

When Bucky had come around to look over Tony’s shoulder, he saw a small box on the screen with a slightly blurry photo in it. It looked like some kind of church or temple -- someplace full of pomp and grandeur, at any rate.

Tony glanced up at Bucky to make sure he was watching then pressed a button on the old keyboard, its keys half-crumbling. The picture started to move, and the blurry shapes in the foreground resolved into people, shuffling and stirring, looking grave. From the side of the image came a honor guard of doombots, followed by two more ‘bots carrying a long box.

No, not a box. A coffin.

As the procession moved, the angle of view followed them, until they’d reached the front of the room and set the coffin in a place that had obviously been prepared for it. A long banner unfurled behind it, showing -- Von Doom, the same iron mask and green cape.

“Wait,” Bucky said. “Wait, does-- you think that’s… he’s not a zombie.” The actual dead never came back, if they weren’t infected before death, but coffins and funeral rites were rare these days. No one wanted to risk it. The dead were burned if possible. But if Von Doom, if the _robot’s creator_ was dead-- then the thing calling itself Von Doom was, in fact, a robot. “How can it not know what it is?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said, hushed, “but it explains a lot about the way he acts. And why their programming is degrading so fast -- every generation is exponentially more damaged than the one before. But I think...” He glanced toward the side of the table where he’d arranged several of the repair projects. “I think he’s going to use me to fix _himself_. If that’s true, I might be able to... to figure out some of the programming, maybe slip something into an upgrade that will shut him down.”

“All right,” Bucky said. “What do you need me to do?”

“I’m not sure yet. I need to see what else I can find, whether I can figure out the programming and how to alter it. Keep an eye out, I guess, make sure they’re not getting suspicious? I may need you to cover me, at the end, if they figure out what I’ve done before the updated programming takes effect.”

“I’ll protect you, you know that, right,” Bucky said. He reached out and brushed one finger down the side of Tony’s face. “You’re the best thing in the world to me.”

Tony trapped Bucky’s hand, pressing it against his cheek, and turned his head to kiss the palm of Bucky’s hand. “Same goes for you,” he promised. “We’ll get through this.”

“I know we will,” Bucky said. He wasn’t good at the sorts of things Tony knew; Bucky barely knew how to turn on a computer, much less program one. He certainly couldn’t repair a circuit. And wounded as he was, even his normal uses such as carrying heavy things was at an all time low.

But he was able, once Tony showed it to him, to go through the files on the computers, ostensibly looking for manuals and repair instructions, but in truth, looking for anything that could help them. Original code fragments, bits of personal history about Von Doom (for the purpose, Tony said, of cracking his passcodes), anything about the structures of the bots that might indicate a weakness.

Tony, in the meantime, worked on the repairs they were assigned. He worked steadily, showing good progress, but somewhat slower than Bucky thought he was capable of. Building his habits so he’d have some time left over each day to work on their solution, once they had a plan in place. By the end of the first day, he’d repaired three circuit boards and two complex support struts, and started work on what looked like an arm disconcertingly similar to Bucky’s own.

“You buildin’ a backup model for me, in case we don’t get out of this,” Bucky wondered, when he brought Tony a tray of the terribly repetitive meals. The castle seemed to have three different flavors, and that’s what they were served for every single meal. Tony didn’t seem to mind all that much, but Bucky might have committed murder for a side of fried fish, or a fresh vegetable.

Tony just shrugged and said they were better than rat bars, which, while true, was setting the bar so low as to be underground. “It was in the box they gave me to fix,” he said, prodding at the arm. “But if we can manage to take it with us when we leave, so much the better. It might give me some ideas for upgrades for you.”

Bucky wasn’t sure he’d trust anything of Von Doom design anywhere near his own body, but he didn’t say so. There was no point in arguing about it until it was more than just theory. 

“The doombots can just go into the cities,” he told Tony some days later, his eyes half-crossed from reading through the files. “That’s how they’re gettin’ all that pre-plague tech. The zombies mostly just ignore ‘em.”

“Nothing there to eat,” Tony agreed, staring thoughtfully across the workshop at one of the ‘bots. “I wonder if I could reset their loyalty circuits... It would be a fantastic way to sweep ahead of us, if they were functioning properly.”

“They’re creepy as fuck, you may not keep one as a pet,” Bucky said.

“Aw, c’mon,” Tony whined, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he pried the casing off a broken wheel housing. “I’ll clean up after it and take it for walks and everything!”

“No, no, I’ve heard that sob story before, an’ I end up with the ‘bot on a leash at three in the morning while it tries to decide where it wants to dump oil. Nope.”

Tony mock-pouted at Bucky, which just made him want to kiss that pursed lip. “Fine,” Tony huffed. “I’ll just have to make my own.”

“Trust anything you make over this hunk of crazy-ass metal any day,” Bucky said, and then did, in fact, kiss Tony’s mouth. They didn’t feel comfortable enough in their prison to do more than that; god only knew what would happen if the ‘bots decided it was subversive or weird. 

But Bucky felt the need to feel Tony’s alive and human-warm skin, to feel the way his mouth moved, hear his heartbeat. 

If the bots hadn’t been homicidal maniacs, it might have been sad, what had happened to them. Instead, it was horrific.

Tony flashed him a smile and leaned into Bucky’s side for a moment before going back to work. “I think I’m getting close,” he said, and nodded toward the computer. “Just a few finishing touches and I think it’ll be ready. How are you feeling?”

“Ready to go,” Bucky said. “Possibly up for fighting. Or running a few miles. Probably not both.”

“Okay. Tomorrow, then, I think.” Tony glanced at the computer again, and then nodded. “Yeah. It’ll be done tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://medium.com/chilled-cat/the-healing-power-of-your-cats-purr-bbdb6b2642ca%C2%A0) is why Mama was sitting on Bucky's chest.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for the smut-averse: the last half of the chapter is smuts. You can bow out as soon as things start to get steamy; there's nothing after that in this chapter.
> 
> Tisfan 3023 - A2: A Wedding and a Funeral  
> 27dragons 3033 - K5: Bucky Barnes/WS

Bucky scowled. He tented out his fingers and gently pushed at the back of the doombot. The machine toppled over, unmoving. Crashed to the floor like a broken statue.

“That’s somewhat anticlimactic,” he complained.

Tony gave Bucky an incredulous look. “Did you think my code wouldn’t work? Did you actually _want_ to fight our way out of here? What’s the point of making a plan if it’s not going to work?”

Sooo, he was already in trouble. Bucky laughed. “Well, no,” he admitted. “Didn’t want to fight our way out. Jus’ seems like after all this fuss, you enter a command code an’ all the sudden they stop working. I ain’t ever had a plan go that smooth.”

Tony grinned. “If it makes you feel better, I wasn’t sure it would replicate that quickly.” He looked around the room thoughtfully. “This place has to be solar powered. And there’s food -- boring, but it’s there. And lots and lots of old tech we can salvage. I think we’re rich. And we could, maybe, set the place up as a shelter or waystation. Have to do something about the decor, though.” He looked down at the toppled doombot. “I feel kind of bad for him. Von Doom. He had this fantastic legacy worked out, and it... failed. Went mad and had to be destroyed.”

Tony crouched down, brushing his hands over the doombot almost gently. “Whatever was in that film we saw, it feels like he actually died just now.”

“We can tell the story any way we want,” Bucky said. “I think-- given what they were doing, I think he meant it for the best. These bots, they’re pretty fantastic. If-- whatever happened to make them crazy hadn’t happened, they could have been invaluable. Honor what he meant, rather than what happened.”

Tony nodded, brushed his fingers down the ‘bot’s faceplate like he was closing a dead man’s eyes. “Yeah. We’ll do that.” He looked at it for another minute, then stood up and brushed off his hands. “Well. Let’s go get the wagon and bring it back, see if the horse stayed anywhere nearby. And the cats. And then we’ll figure out what to do next.”

“I hope they’re okay,” Bucky said. The cats would be fine -- probably. They were cats. But being able to find them again, that might be more tricky. 

And fixing the wagon. On the other hand, the doombots probably had kept the area clear of zombies for a while, so they shouldn’t have to worry too much about that. He was still feeling the buzz of impending -- well, Doom, haha -- but maybe nothing more bad would happen. Today, anyway.

“Ug, brain,” he said. “I swear, I wish I could just take it out sometimes, stop thinkin’. Everything bad keeps happening, just when we think we’re gonna be okay.”

“Eventually,” Tony said, reaching out to take Bucky’s hand. “Eventually, we’ll run out of bad stuff, and everything will be fine.”

“Begin to understand why attachments were-- not forbidden, but… discouraged,” Bucky said. “It’s like I can’t think straight when you’re in danger. I got so much more to lose now than I ever did. Wouldn’t trade it, though. I think… think sometimes it’s good to be reminded what we’re fightin’ for.”

Tony smiled up at him, sweet and open, and then leaned in to claim a kiss. “I’ve spent a decade going from villa to stronghold to villa, trading for my keep. Keeping things going. But with you... When I’m with you, I want to do more than just _maintain_ things. I want to make things _better_. You make me want to be better.”

“I can’t imagine you bein’ any better,” Bucky said. “Keep me on my toes as it is. But yeah. I’d like-- to make things better. To build up somethin’ new. With you.” He turned that thought over in his head a few times. “You think the next villa will have a clerk?”

Not that, really, there was much in the way of written laws anymore. A villa did what it had to do to survive, and everyone cooperated. Mostly because the worst punishment a person could have these days was banishment. If you didn’t have your villa, you faced death, or the long walk to the next villa and having to explain what you’d done to lose your place.

Very few people made that much trouble. Not anymore.

And a clerk wasn’t necessary, not really. If you said you were married, you were. If you said this was your kid, it was.

But the tradition was nice.

Tony was looking at him with wide, knowing eyes, as if he knew exactly what Bucky was thinking. “I-- Yeah. Yeah, most of them have at least someone who keeps a register. You... Really?” He rubbed at the bracelet on his wrist, the one Bucky had given him when Bucky had been about to die. The one that made him Bucky’s heir. “Yeah. Yes. Okay. Let’s see the clerk, next villa.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said, simply. “Finding you was the best thing that ever happened to me, but you sayin’ you’ll be with me, until death. That’s a real close second.”

Tony kissed him again. “Want to go see if any of the rooms have an actual bed in them?”

“And no spying doombots,” Bucky said, relieved. That had been creepy as hell. “Yes--” it took him a moment to find the fancy word. “Fiancé. I would like that. Celebrate our engagement.”

Tony grinned and tugged Bucky toward the door. “It’s worth celebrating every day that we’re together.”

* * *

There were no laws that dictated who could marry whom, or when, or that a relationship had to be witnessed by a particular kind of person before it was considered real. Tony and Bucky could have shown up at the gates of Glenn Falls and declared themselves already married, and no one would have questioned it.

But there was something special about having your promises to each other witnessed. Recorded in living memories and villa records. If they were overrun by zombies before they reached New Albany, then at least the people of Glenn Falls would remember them, and would remember that they were together.

Also, every villa enjoyed an excuse to celebrate. They filled the market square with flowers and music and the rich smell of roasting meat and vegetables. Even the cats were part of the party, being courted by a dozen children with bits of meat. There was music and dancing, and after they’d danced together once, Tony and Bucky were both handed from partner to partner, spinning and swaying and laughing.

When they were finally allowed to fall back into each other’s arms, Tony’s chest ached from laughing and singing, and his feet were sore from dancing so long. But he wrapped his arms around Bucky’s neck and all that fell away, leaving him with just one thought: _mine, forever._

Bucky was smiling, almost indulgently. “And have you enjoyed our party, my husband?” The villa had customs about weddings, which included one spouse in black, the other in white. Bucky looked very, _very_ good in black. Tony wasn’t entirely sure that he didn’t look like an idiot in white, but Bucky had smiled, broad and beautiful, as soon as he’d seen Tony in the white suit, so there was that.

There were gray jackets for them to wear tomorrow, to symbolize their bond, and rings they’d wear for the rest of their lives. 

“Best party I’ve been to in a long time,” Tony said truthfully, and swayed closer to whisper, “But I can’t wait for it to be _over_.”

“It’s getting close to the time we can slip away,” Bucky said. “Or we can make a scene and just _go_.” Before Tony could speculate on what that meant, Bucky scooped Tony up, one hand under his knees, the other around his back. “Throw your flowers at the hopefuls, and we’ll go find us a soft bed.”

Tony was laughing again, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so unreservedly _happy_. The young folk of the villa were gathering, so Tony took one last smell of his flowers, imprinting that scent in his memory forever, and then threw them into the small crowd. “All right, husband,” he said, not even waiting to see who’d caught them. “Take me to bed.”

“With pleasure,” Bucky said, and, carrying Tony as if he weighed almost nothing, Bucky strode out of the villa’s square, kicked the inn’s door open, and took Tony upstairs. “You’ll have to get the door. It’s bad luck for you to trip over the threshold. Thus, why I’m carrying you.”

“Oh, is that why?” Tony teased. “Not just because you wanted to show off in front of everyone?” He leaned over to push open the door to their room.

“Everyone should see what fine, strong husband you’ve caught,” Bucky said. “And you deserve every bit of it.”

Tony huffed and kissed Bucky lightly. “I did catch a fine, strong husband, at that,” he agreed. “As I’m sure you’re going to demonstrate in depth.”

“And as many times as you’d like,” Bucky said. He gave Tony a bit of a squeeze before depositing him on the bed with a bit of a bounce. “You do look beautiful. I wish-- back when I was a boy, we had so many cameras, we had pictures of everyone we knew, doing everything imaginable. These days, only a few people-- but I wish there was some way to capture just how perfect you are, right in this moment.”

Tony reached for Bucky’s hand. “We’ll just have to remember it,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll never forget.” He pulled lightly, wordlessly asking Bucky to join him.

Bucky kicked off his boots and peeled out of the fancy wedding tunic before climbing into the bed with him. "Memorize everything about you. The way you look and feel, the way you taste and the way you smell."

He nuzzled at Tony's throat.

Tony tipped his head back and marveled at how easy it was to do, how much he trusted Bucky. While Bucky licked and nipped at his throat, sending delicious shivers through Tony’s body, he wormed a hand between then and started unfastening his own tunic, wiggled a little to shove off his boots, one after the other. “I want all of you,” he sighed. “Every last bit.”

“You keep wigglin’ under me like that, and you’re like to get all of it, all at once,” Bucky teased, running his palm down Tony’s stomach, over to his hip, and then over the front panel of his trousers, cupping him through the fabric.

Tony shuddered at the touch, verging on too much and not enough all at once. “And would that be such a terrible thing?” He slid his hands over Bucky’s shoulders and back and chest, feeling the roughness of scars and hair, the smooth skin, the firm muscle under it all. 

“No,” Bucky decided, his hand moving up and down, slowly over the closure, then fiddling with the button, then back down again. “We have our whole lives to work on getting it right. And practice’ll be fun.” He gave a philosophical shrug, then popped the button out of its hole.

Tony let his head fall back on the pillow. “I’m with you,” he said. “It’s right.” Because some times were better than others, but with Bucky at his side, Tony felt like they could do anything. Be anything. Reach any height.

“I’ll get you there,” Bucky promised. “I like watching you. You’re so damn beautiful, it-- it hurts, right here, like the best sort of-- I don’t know, I’m being romantic, you know. I never was, before. So many things I wasn’t, before you come into my life.” There went the buttons and Bucky moved up to claim Tony’s mouth in a kiss, his hand slipping into the gap between Tony’s trousers and his skin. 

Tony gasped into Bucky’s mouth and arched into the touch. It seemed his whole body was sparking and fizzing, lighting up like electricity with every touch. “I like it,” he said, breathless, when Bucky drew back again. “I like it when you’re romantic. It’s sweet and... I don’t know, I just like it.”

“You’re sweet,” Bucky said, and he kissed Tony’s mouth. His chin, the little dip right where his collarbones met, down his sternum. “And I--” lower still, licking at Tony’s ribs, and then over his belly. “-am going to eat you right up.”

Tony groaned and arched up into it, relishing it all, the scrape of Bucky’s stubble over the soft skin of his stomach, the heat of Bucky’s breath as it puffed over his skin and the contrast of the cool air rushing in as Bucky moved on. “All your favorite flavors,” Tony teased, pushing his hands restlessly through Bucky’s hair.

“Mmmhmm,” Bucky said, nosing at Tony’s stomach. The puff of air against wet skin caused shivers up and down Tony’s spine. “Let me just get this--” he tugged at Tony’s trousers, pulling them down to about mid thigh before sitting all the way up to get them out of the way entirely. “Clothes, so annoying. There, now that’s better, right?” He gazed down at Tony; heat and possession and rapture all at once. Ravenous.

“Much better,” Tony agreed. “Be about perfect if you lost yours, too.” He propped himself up on his elbows to watch Bucky finish getting undressed. “You’re so gorgeous. Love to look at you, all the time.”

“Look all you want,” Bucky invited. He laughed, rolling over on the bed to lay flat, slightly spread out as if for Tony’s inspection. He was bronzed on the arm, face and neck, with paler skin around his chest and thighs, dotted here and there with scars that had nothing to do with the loss of his arm. He had a smattering of freckles along his ribs, and a shallow navel with a curl of hair that lead down to his groin.

Tony knew his lover, like the shape of his own hands, but it was still glorious and satisfying to be able to just-- take the time and enjoy it.

He took full advantage of Bucky’s display, crawling over him to kiss and taste and suck. He traced constellations over Bucky’s ribs with his tongue, sliding from freckle to freckle, and nuzzled at Bucky’s belly, breathing in the rich smell of Bucky’s skin and arousal. “So beautiful,” he breathed, kissing around the edges of a long scar.

“Glorious,” Bucky said, and he encouraged Tony to straddle him, running his hands up Tony’s chest, thumbing at his nipples. “Could get used to you, just the way you’re looking at me, right now.” He stroked his fingers over Tony’s cock, just a feather-light touch. “Should be slick in that bedside drawer. If you want?”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “Yeah, I want.” He leaned over to reach for the drawer, a procedure that Bucky made immeasurably more difficult by teasing and touching and stroking. But eventually he snared the little bottle and sat up again. “Menace,” he accused fondly.

“You love it,” Bucky said, then, almost wondering, “You love _me_.” Like that was something he hadn’t known, or hadn’t believed, or-- just was struck all over by it. “You love me.”

“I do,” Tony said, leaning down to kiss Bucky tenderly. “I love you so much. Forever. Or at least, as long as I live.” He got his fingers slicked and reached back to push at his entrance, eager and excited.

“My whole life, there ain’t been anyone like you-- and I’m so grateful I didn’t know what I was missing,” Bucky said. “Gonna love you for the rest of my life.” He watched, biting at that lush lower lip, as Tony got himself ready, thighs shifting a little under Tony as his hips moved apparently without any thought, little gentle nudges and lifts. Too eager to wait.

That matched Tony’s feelings, though, so as soon as he’d managed the bare minimum of prep, he was reaching down to slick Bucky’s cock, grasping the base to steady it while he slid down onto it, every inch an agony of pleasure. “Oh, god, Bucky...”

“So fine,” Bucky said, his hands on Tony’s thighs, helping to steady him, thumbs rubbing against the skin there. He hitched in a breath and threw his head back, the cords in his neck standing out as he breathed, letting Tony settle. 

It burned and ached -- he’d rushed prep and Bucky wasn’t a small man -- but Tony hardly cared. He kept pushing until Bucky was fully seated in him, deep enough it seemed like Tony could feel Bucky in his chest, nudging against his lungs. “God, that’s good,” he sighed, and rocked slowly, not really thrusting, just reminding his body that this was good, this was glorious. Another slow roll of his hips and oh, _oh_ , yes, that was exactly right, that right there.

Bucky pulled his knees up, giving Tony something to lean back against, his hips rocking up and down, slow, so slow, as they moved together. Swaying in some imaginary breeze. Each little movement echoed in shivering sensation. Bucky held out his hand for some of the lubricant, and then, fingers slick and warm, stroked Tony’s cock in time with their movements. Slow, almost torturously slow, up, and down, a twist near the top, a gentle squeeze at the bottom.

Tony kept it slow for as long as he could stand it, drinking in each sensation, the look on Bucky’s face, the sound of their breathing and gasping and groaning. “My husband,” Tony panted. “Love you, love you so much...” He held off for as long as he could, but all too soon, he was giving in to his body’s demands for _more_ and _faster_ and _harder_.

“Hold on,” Bucky told him, and before Tony could think to ask _hold on to what_ , Bucky had rolled them over, barely missing a stroke, driving down into Tony’s body, his skin going blotchy-red, sweat beading up on his temples and throat. “You’ve so good, you’re so good, oh, Tony--” He cried out, fingers clamping down on Tony’s shoulder, hot counterpoints of pain, a spark of contrast, and the whole time, he kept looking at Tony, eyes shining like stars.

Tony couldn’t look away. He rocked his hips up into Bucky’s thrusting, wrapped his legs around Bucky’s hips. “So good, so perfect, honey, come on, come with me, want to feel you coming apart--” He clung to control by his fingertips.

“I-- I got you,” Bucky told him, “you’re mine. Always.” And then Bucky couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open any longer, his mouth dropping open, cheeks going pink as he shuddered and stiffened. One, two more good, deep thrusts, and Bucky spasmed, groaning his completion.

The pulse of Bucky’s cock inside him was pushing him closer, closer to the edge. Bucky had already fallen over, and where Bucky went, Tony was determined to follow. He grabbed at his own dick, but barely had time to stroke it before the fire of climax washed through him, carrying everything away except for Bucky, held safe in his arms.

Bucky all but squashed him for a moment, then shifted around to make it easier for Tony to breathe, kissing Tony’s throat and the side of his face, and planting open mouthed, sloppy kisses on his mouth. “Love you.”

Tony hummed happily, shifting around so Bucky wasn’t lying on him but he could wrap himself around Bucky, pressing close. “Love you too, husband.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tisfan 3023 - A3: Free Space  
> 27dragons 3033 - R5: Adrenaline Rush

“Maybe two more days to New Albany,” Bucky said, climbing down from the tree. “I don’t see any swarm, or even any lingering zombies. Some of the wildlife’s come back. There’s a herd of deer not far from here. I could set up, pick something off as they come along the game trail toward the water.”

Tony hummed. “Couldn’t hurt to approach any survivors with a gift in-hand,” he said. “A deer would last two days if we waited to butcher it.”

“Here, we’ll picket the horses nearby,” Bucky said. “Deer’ll approach if they smell other animals. Covers up our scent and makes them think nothing’s wrong.”

They left the wagon not far behind, tied the horses to a halterline to let them graze, and waited for the deer. 

As the sun started going down, Bucky scowled. The encroaching darkness revealed a random, but obviously technical, flashing light. “What _is_ that?”

Tony squinted at it, and rummaged in his pack for a pair of binoculars. Enlarging the view didn’t do much for him, though. It was still a flickering light with no obvious source, though the direction wasn’t hard to pinpoint. “Not sure. Definitely not zombies.” He considered it for a moment longer. “Want to go check it out? It’s in the right direction.”

“It’s not natural,” Bucky pointed out. “Which means, by default, it’s probably a person. Or people. Or killer robots, that’s no longer completely out of the question. Yeah, let’s go look.”

Tony packed his binoculars away and set the safety on the rifle. “On foot, or do we want to take the horses?”

“It’s not that far,” Bucky said. “And we’re less likely to break a leg than the horses.” He shouldered his gun and pulled on his goggles. “I’m getting some heat readings. Small, though. I think we might have found some survivors. Or pigs. I’ll be able to tell better when we get closer.”

“Either way, that’s good news for us,” Tony pointed out. He fell into step beside Bucky, trusting to the night-vision of Bucky’s goggles. “Pig’s even better than deer.”

They hadn’t gone terribly far. The game trail, in the nature of such things, drifted around particularly thick clumps of bramble and wound around the terrain. It crossed over itself, and--

Bucky knew-- he knew it, the second his foot came down on the ground -- that something was wrong. Vastly, dangerously wrong. “Tony, back--”

The whole ground shifted, leaves falling away and gravity spun them, before they bounced. Mama Cat, who tended to follow them whenever they left the wagon behind as if she didn’t trust them to take care of themselves, hissed and raced off into the woods.

They were caught in some sort of thick webbing, all knots and tangles, suspended about ten feet above ground. “The actual _fuck_?” Bucky demanded.

“Very-- nn! --clever,” Tony said, struggling to shift into a more defensible position. “Who the fuck laid _that_ trap?”

Bucky twisted. One arm was neatly pinned behind his back, the other was stuck all the way through one of the net’s holes. “I have at least four knives on me,” he told Tony. Technically, he had about twenty, but he was pretty sure the ones in his pack were well out of reach. “Can you reach one? There’s a sheath in each boot, one on my left thigh and one at the small of my back.”

“I think so,” Tony said. He wriggled some more, stretching and reaching, making the trap spin gently in the air. “Almost, can you maybe twist this way just a little?”

“Ok, that-- _that_ is not my knife,” Bucky protested. “Down, and a bit to the lef-- my left, not yours!”

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to be so tense about it,” Tony muttered, groping even more and stretching. His fingers grazed Bucky’s thigh, several inches short of the knife’s hilt. “Damn it. Almost had it.”

“You are not edible,” someone complained from far below them. “What are you doing in my deer trap?”

Bucky twitched, his whole nervous system sizzled, like he’d been shocked. He struggled to look down, fighting with the netting. A dark shape stared back up at him, hands on hips. That voice--

“Head trauma,” Bucky muttered, fighting the urge to slip into that strange fog-fugue state. “Head trauma.”

Tony twisted, kneeing Bucky in the kidney (not hard, thank goodness), in an effort to look. “Oh, shit, she’s just a kid,” he said under his breath. Louder, he said, “We’re as surprised as you are. Maybe more. That flashing light -- was that you?”

“We have many mouths to feed,” she snapped, “and you are getting in the way. Now, the whole evening’s work is wasted.”

_\-- you will have to trigger the mechanism, just before you cross the bridge,” the girl said, shoving it into his hand. “Do not wait. Run. There is a delay timer, but they will chase you. If you blow the bridge too early, you will not kill nearly enough of them.” She had a stern, hard look on her face, as if most of her family was not part of that crowd of undead, if everyone she’d ever known was not infected._

“ _I’ve got it, go on, get the little ones to the safe room.”_

“ _Bucky, don’t leave,” Kobik yelled, clinging to his pants, her tiny face scrawled with tears._

“ _Harley,” he told Kobik’s brother. “Please, get her?” He didn’t know if Harley and Kobik were actually related or not. People tended to adopt each other out of desperation in situations like these. He tucked the mechanism into his pocket. “I’ll be back before you can miss me. Promise.”--_

“We can help with that,” Tony promised. “We were hunting, ourselves, when we saw the light. How many is _many_? Were you from New Albany?”

“Shuri?” Bucky asked, his mouth forming the word without really knowing what it meant, except-- except that he did. “Shuri?”

“Sergeant Barnes? What are you doing up there? Where have you _been_?”

Bucky’s head spun, dizzy and dangerous, as the net rotated in the other direction. “Can we ask questions when we’re down on the ground?”

“You _know_ each other? Bucky, is this--”

“I got it!” said a new voice from the darkness.

“No, wait,” Shuri said, “you have to--”

There was a jerk, and then the whole net crashed to the ground. Bucky’s arm flashed up several alarms as his fingers bent backward, and-- “ow.” He was pretty sure he’d just squashed his husband. “Tony?”

Tony let out a thin whimper.

“Oops,” said the other would-be hunter, stepping forward into the small ring of light from the lantern Shuri held.

“Cass--” Bucky whispered. “Oh, god.” He struggled to throw off the net, to get off of Tony. “Are you hurt, Tony-- oh, god. Cass. Shuri… where’s…” _Peter, Harley, MJ, Ned, Morgan, Kobik, Tommy--_ His brain hurt; not like a headache, but his actual brain-- _hurt_. “What happened-- how… where is everyone? Did-- how long have I been gone?”

“I think I’m in one piece,” Tony reported, making no move to get up off the ground. “Though I think I’m one giant bruise, now.” He tipped his head back to study Shuri, as much as he could from that position, and then looked at Bucky. “Someone want to fill me in on what’s happening?”

“We thought you died,” Cass said, twisting into a squat to look at Bucky. “Did you die? Are you a ghost person?”

Bucky shook his head, numb. He-- he knew these kids, these and… nearly a dozen more. “New Albany,” he said. “They-- they were on a field and research trip. When the city went mad, they--”

“We lock ourselves in the vault, like smart people,” Shuri said, “and wait for someone to come for us. Several hours, and then this one comes, he tells us that there is a place, where we will be safe, until the swarm moves on.” 

“I remember,” Cassie said. “It got hard to breathe, before he opened it up. Ned and Peter went to sleep and we couldn’t wake them up, it was… so hot.”

“They almost smothered to death in an old bank vault,” Bucky said. “How long-- when--”

“About six months ago, you fell off the bridge,” Shuri said. “It was a long drop. We… RiRi got us moving again. We wanted to look for you, but it was too far.”

“Kobik made an _awful_ fuss,” Cass reported. “She was mad for _weeks_. She’s going to be so happy you’re back!” She paused. “And smug.”

“Head trauma,” Bucky murmured. “I-- I forgot.”

“Oh my god,” Tony said, scrambling up to put his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “This is... _This_ is what you forgot? Oh, shit, Bucky, sweetheart...”

“I fell off the bridge-- I had to blow up the bridge, but there was so much fighting, the remote got damaged. I had to blow it manually,” Bucky said, watching the events scroll out before him, like an old time television show. “I fell… and then-- I forgot. I woke up-- miles downriver. The swarm-- I needed to warn people. And… I just left. Oh, god, I left you. _I left you all here_ , oh my god.” Bucky was choking on sudden grief and rage and guilt.

Shuri didn’t look impressed. “After bringing us all to safety, and ensuring the zombies could not reach us,” she pointed out. “We are okay. Will you come back with us? You and your...” She turned to Tony. “Who are you?”

“Tony Stark, wandering tinkerer,” Tony said. “Also, Bucky’s husband.”

Bucky nodded. “We’ve got-- horses, and a wagon. And if you give me a few moments, we can have a deer, as well.”

“Meat would be nice,” Cassie said. “We don’t have any guns, so-- traps and spotlights are the best way we’ve got to catch things. We tried a pit trap once, but it didn’t work out. Deer can jump right out of it.”

“Are there more of these-- net traps out there?” Bucky jerked his chin in the general direction of the river.

“No,” Shuri told him. “We do not leave the underground very often, or for very long. It is not safe, but we must eat.”

“Smart,” Tony agreed. “Have you got space for our animals, or should we run a perimeter wire and hope for the best?”

“It is a good place,” Shuri said, “Many rooms. If they do not mind being enclosed, they can stay indoors.”

Bucky nodded, slowly. “Old bunker. Really old. It was meant to guard the President from nuclear war, you know, back when we had presidents. And idiots willing to blow us up to prove a political point.”

“Okay,” Tony said. “That makes things a little easier. Do you know how to get there?” he asked Bucky. “We can go get the animals and the wagon, catch dinner on the way, and haul it back.”

Bucky nodded, slowly. “You come out through the escape tunnel?”

“We cannot rebuild the bridge, so yes,” Shuri said, rolling her eyes at him. “It is not far.” She pointed. “On this side of the river, there is a path down the hill. Not too steep, it was an old road once. Enough for two cars. You will see it. I will send Peter to the top of the riverbank to watch for you.”

“Path down the hill by the river,” Tony recited. “Got it. We’ll be back before dawn. With breakfast.”

Bucky gave a nod, then, without even realizing that he meant to do it, he gathered both girls into his arms. “I’m so sorry.” Cassie clung to him, hanging around his neck, for a long moment, before they both let go.

Tony waited until they’d gone a ways before nudging him with one elbow. “You okay?”

“I forgot--” Bucky said. “I thought they were dreams, or old memories, or-- I kept dreaming about them, but I didn’t know. Christ, they’re lucky to be alive, and I just _left them_.”

“It’s not your fault,” Tony pointed out. “It sounds like you did pretty well for them before you fell. What... What were you going to do with them if you’d made it across the bridge?”

“Secure them in the bunker, and go tell Fury, and get some help. There’s no way I could escort a dozen kids ages three to sixteen some four hundred miles down the damn Hudson. We’d be a travelling buffet. Not alone. I’d need at least five, to provide adequate protection.”

Tony hummed. “Wagon makes it easier,” he pointed out. “Keep them all together, and it’s got the perimeter. And I bet some of the older kids can be trained to help.”

“You won’t be able to get Parker to _stop_ helping,” Bucky said, a wave of fondness sweeping over him. “Kid’s smart as a whip and brave as anything. It’s a wonder he hasn’t gotten himself killed, taking risks the way he does.”

Tony flashed a grin at Bucky. “Now I wonder where I’ve heard _that_ before.”

“Can’t imagine,” Bucky drawled. “Either ever’ time you look in the mirror. Or at me.”

Tony chuckled. “If nothing else, that girl Shuri seems to have a pretty good head on her shoulders. Well, let’s not put the wagon before the horse. We’ll get back and see how things look. But I think we can do it, together.”

Bucky nodded. “Feels like we can do anything. So long’s we do it together.”

* * *

The path was right where Shuri had said it was, more than wide enough for the wagon. It was a little bit steep, but as long as Tony kept the brake on, the wagon didn’t try to catch up to the horse. “You see anyone? This Peter kid who’s supposed to be watching?”

Bucky lowered his goggles, turning his head. “There-- he might be asleep. Hey, Spidey, wake up!”

What looked like no more than a pile of trash shifted, revealing itself to be a lanky kid with messy hair and his finger in a book that had been held up almost to his nose. “I wasn’t sleeping,” he protested. “I’m reading.”

“You’re gonna go blind that way,” Bucky said.

“Glasses are _really_ hard to come by,” Tony added. “You here to show us the rest of the way? What’re you reading that’s so riveting, anyway?”

“Organic chem,” Peter said, tossing the book up to Tony on the wagon’s seat. Hunter, who’d been napping curled against Tony’s hip, arched and hissed at the heavy _thump_ it made, then squeaked and jumped down into the wagon’s interior, probably in search of Mama. “Trying to synthesize insulin,” Peter continued. “Pigs are harder to catch than test tubes.”

Tony grimaced. “You got an insulin-dependant in the bunch?” Before the zombies, diabetes had been a serious but manageable condition. Now, without factories to synthesize insulin, it was a slow death sentence. He picked up the book and riffled through it. “This is pretty advanced. You must be smart as hell.”

“More like desperate. You know it takes four or five pigs to get enough insulin to last for a month? At least we can eat the rest of it.” Peter sighed. “It’s not that easy to purify it, either. I worry that we’re going to kill her.”

“Even if you manage to figure out _ho_ w, do you have the facilities to make it?”

Peter wobbled a hand back and forth. “It’s going to be hard to test it,” he admitted. “I’m really in the theory stage rather than a practical one. But humans did it once, in the Before. We can do it again. Maybe. I hope so.”

Tony wished he could take this kid to the research station where he’d practically been raised. Peter would fit right in, brains and a drive to _fix_ things. He glanced at Bucky. “Your boat have laboratory facilities?” he wondered.

Bucky nodded. “I don’t mix a lot with the eggheads,” he said, almost apologetically. “When you spend half your life being someone’s lab experiment, you tend to get gun shy around the men in the white coats. I don’t know how good they are, but they’ve managed some pretty impressive things. We got a doctor there who’s done wonders with reacquiring advanced surgery skills.”

Tony nodded. “Good. We’ll see what we can do about getting us some lab time, when we get there. In the meantime--” He closed the book with a muffled bang. “--onward to safety. Or at least stabling.”

They’d barely made it inside the facility when there was a chorus of young voices, all of them talking at once. The only thing that could be clearly heard was Bucky’s name, shouted over and over. Bucky was practically dragged off the wagon, hugged and hung off of. He plucked up a little girl, no more than four, with hair as white as if she were eighty, and sat her on his shoulders while he made excuses and exclaimed over gains in height, new shoes, a cut on an arm, hunting trophies. 

He practically disappeared into the crowd of them, looking both happy and guilty, relieved and anxious all at the same time.

“This is a pretty good perimeter rig up you’ve got,” Peter said, leaning into the back of the wagon to examine the power source. “You build it yourself?”

“More or less,” Tony admitted. “The battery pack is scavenged, mostly, but I’ve had to repair it a few times, so I’m not sure how much is left of the original. The wiring is all me, though. It detaches so I can take it with me if I have to leave the wagon behind.”

“Pretty clever,” Peter said, sitting back up. “Everybody, make a hole!” He cupped his hands to either side of his mouth when he yelled, and the kids pushed to one side of the hall, carrying Bucky with them like a boat caught in a wave. “Down the hall, to the left. We can keep your horses there, and it shouldn’t be too hard to clean up after them. I want to show you my workshop.”

“I’d love to see it,” Tony said, clucking the horse into a slow walk. “What else do you do, besides organic chemistry?”

“He makes rope,” the little white-haired child said, from her perch on Bucky’s shoulders. “I’m Kobik. Who are _you_?”

Tony reached up to offer the child his hand. “Tony Stark, at your service. I’m Bucky’s husband.”

Kobik grabbed hold of his fingers and then, as if she’d never doubted an adult’s willingness to dislocate their hips to catch her, practically swung off Bucky’s shoulders to latch on to Tony like a limpet. “Oh, then you can be my _other_ daddy. I ‘dopted him.”

“Kobik adopts someone every week,” Peter said, under his breath. “I think we’re all related now, somehow. Which is _bad_ , because how am I supposed to marry MJ if Kobik thinks we’re both her older siblings?”

Tony adjusted Kobik’s grip so she wasn’t quite choking him anymore, and told Peter, “I’m sure she’ll be a little more flexible as she gets older.” He glanced around the room, taking note of the kids still mobbing Bucky. “Which one is MJ?”

Peter pointed to a teen, her dark hair in thick waves, arms crossed over her chest like she was above, or apart, from the main group, but she was smiling. “She’s so smart,” Peter gushed.

“Yeah? That’s good, you should marry someone smart. Make smart babies. Eventually, someone’s going to figure out how to _fix_ the damned plague.” He cocked his head, studying Peter’s starstruck expression. “Does... Does MJ know you’re planning to marry her?”

“Well, I mean,” Peter said, “Um… we haven’t specifically talked about it--”

“Relax, I’m just yanking your chain,” Tony said, amused. He steered the wagon into the room Peter had directed him to -- probably it had been meant for car storage, Before -- and then swung Kobik into the back of the wagon. “Find the big bag of grain,” he told her, “and put two scoops of it in that bucket.”

Kobik squealed with delight when she saw the cats and had to be reminded about her task. “Where’s a scoops?” she asked, and then found it (on top of the bag of grain) and brandished it like a conquering hero. “One scoops. And two scoops!”

“Well, don’t you look right at home,” Bucky observed, leaning into the back of the wagon, but his glowing gaze was on Tony, not the little girl.

Tony looked up with a grin. “Just getting the wagon unhitched and the animals fed,” he said lightly, but he made his way over to give Bucky a kiss. “You pass muster?”

Bucky shook his head, wondering. “Apparently they’ve been writin’ songs about me, and telling stories, like I’m some sort of hero. Oral history tradition--” he said that in a haughty tone, pointing to -- oh, it was MJ again. “So they don’t forget where they came from.” Bucky swallowed audibly.

“You are definitely a hero,” Tony said firmly. “I can’t wait to hear these songs.”

“Oh, I think MJ’s already planning a story night,” Bucky said, and his cheeks went dark. “She might be th’ only one who’s actually mad at me, so this is her revenge. And I’ve just gotta sit there and take it.”

“You’re a _Nomad_ ,” Tony pointed out, amused. “No one’s ever sung your praises before?” He considered. “Maybe not literally.”

“Not _generally_ literally,” Bucky agreed. “Sometimes some villa elder will ramble on in a speech or something. Never really sat well with me. I do what I do. There’s a few who do it for glory, but that’s not me.”

Tony kissed him again and then jumped down to unhitch the wagon and feed the horses. “Well, then, I expect you’ll just have to take your punishment like a man.” He shot Bucky a look from under his lashes. “Maybe I can offer to make you feel better, after.”

“There’s a solid deal, husband,” Bucky said, his gaze heated and full of promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Insulin-dependent](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Mindy_Glidewell_\(Earth-2149\)) comic characters.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tisfan (3023) - A5: Howard Stark  
> 27dragons (3033) - S1: RiRi Williams)

There was nothing Bucky could do to stop them.

Begging hadn’t helped. Neither had threats.

The kids were going to put on their performance of the Life of Bucky Barnes whether he wanted them to or not. And it might not have been so bad, if it was just him, and the kids. 

But Tony was given a place of honor, front and center, to watch the whole shebang and he took entirely too much goddamn delight in it.

And from the sly little glances he kept shooting Bucky’s way, he absolutely knew that Bucky was utterly mortified by the whole thing. Which did not stop him from applauding wildly at the end of every scene, or _boo_ ing at the villain of the moment.

Bucky couldn’t even complain, not really. They were kids, and what’s more, they were kids that he liked. A lot. He didn’t want to hurt their feelings. Which meant that when the lights were turned back on and the various little actors and actresses took their bows, Bucky had to clap and look pleased and give out praise.

And then MJ wanted to go through the whole play, line by line, and get Bucky’s input, and argue with him about the artistic choices of _his life_. On the plus side, as a last minute addition, Kobik came out on stage in a horrible black wig and a bootblack mustache and beard on her face, to play Bucky’s bride.

So, that at least, had been fun.

“She looks just like you,” Bucky told Tony, Kobik nestled back in her traditional place on Bucky’s hip.

“Somewhat shorter, but otherwise an excellent copy,” Tony told Kobik, highly amused. “I don’t recall _quite_ as much swooning on my part, though.”

“I remember a _lot_ of swooning on your part,” Bucky teased. “And some screaming, too. I’ll have to tell you about how Tony saved my life.” MJ appeared as if summoned, her notebook and pen in hand. 

But the end of the play had been educational, talking about settling in to the bunker and how they’d gotten the generators running again, hooked up to solar panels. Smart kids. Bucky was amazed that they had survived, but they’d done better than some of the adult groups he’d known, and at least, none of them had been stupid enough to stab each other, which sometimes happened in the villas. 

“I definitely want to talk with whoever it was who got the generators set up,” Tony said. “That took some impressive mechanical improvisation.”

"That's RiRi," MJ said. "She's new. She showed up right after your funeral. Heard us playing “Taps” and came to see who was still alive. Scared everyone to death with her battle armor."

Tony stared at her. “Battle. Armor. Okay, now I _really_ have to meet her.”

“Easy enough,” MJ said, standing up.

“Cover your ears,” Bucky warned.

Tony glanced at Bucky, startled, but put his hands up. And just in time, too.

“ **Oi! Williams!** ” MJ’s bellow was nothing short of deafening, but it carried across a room filled with teenagers and younger kids, who had all been shrieking and talking and yelling, with clarity.

“MJ makes a very good drill sergeant,” Bucky said. “Used her and those lungs a number of times to keep the kids organized.”

RiRi was tall, slender, and her hair gave her another good five inches, standing all but straight up in a puff like dandelions gone to seed. “ _What_?” She put her hands on her hips and leaned. Her arms were speckled with dirt and grease and she had a good sized burn across one forearm. The toolbelt she wore kept her leaning perpetually to the left and she had safety goggles hanging around her neck.

Tony stepped forward and offered a hand. “I hear you’re the one who rigged the solar panels to the generators,” he said. “And that you have battle armor. I have a burning need to see your workshop now.”

“It’s noisier, and messier, than Parker’s,” she warned him. “You can handle a little dirt and grease, fancy man?”

“Bring it on,” Tony promised. “You coming?” he asked Bucky, and then waved for RiRi to lead the way.

“Yeah, why not.”

She had her place down, quite a ways away from the main living area, and based on the number of blast marks and soot on the walls, that was for safety as well as privacy. The door was heavy, and _locked_. Bucky hadn’t seen a lock, much less one with a punch code _and_ a key in a long time. Even on the _Avenger_ , locks weren’t much in play. Fury’d said it himself, if they needed to keep people out of what they were doing, maybe they shouldn’t be doing it.

But RiRi punched the code in with a cheerful, “Had to keep the little ones out somehow. They’re prone to grabbing sharp objects and sticking their hands into shiny fires.”

“I’ve noticed that in the past,” Tony agreed. “What kinds of projects have you been working on?”

“Well, this,” she said, waving a hand at a tarp-covered shape. “This is my pride and joy.” The object underneath was somewhat taller thanTony’s wagon, but not nearly as broad, vaguely man-shaped. “I call her Iron Heart.” And she pulled away the tarp.

“Oh my god,” Tony breathed. “She’s _beautiful_.” He reached out, trailing fingers over the burnished metal of the arm. “She’s got to take more power than solar panels can keep up with. What’s the power source?”

RiRi twiddled her fingers together for a moment, deciding, then opened the chest panel, pulling out something that glowed, soft and blue, pulsing as if with its own heartbeat. “This is her heart,” she said, delicately handing the device to Tony. “It’s called an arc-reactor.”

Tony startled and looked at Bucky. “Like the one that runs your arm?”

Bucky curled his hand around the metal shoulder, rubbing as if he could feel the power of it under the metal. “I guess so. Never actually seen it before.”

“I didn’t make it,” RiRi was saying, “some guy back in the Before developed it. Howard Snark or something. I don’t remember. Found the blueprints, bunch of stuff, really, and this. His prototype.”

“Stark,” Tony said softly, staring at the light of the arc reactor as if it were hypnotic. “Howard Stark. My dad. Where did you find his files?”

Bucky inspected the battle-armor. He’d seen a few sets of armor, good for fighting the infected. If they couldn’t bite, they couldn’t infect more people, and metal armor was pretty good for that. Even the enhanced strength of the infected couldn’t put human bones through steel plating. 

The problem was, it was impractical for long term, and often exhausting to wear.

“--old army base in New Jersey, place called Lehigh? You know it? My parents heard rumors, back in the Before, that they were working on a cure there. We didn’t find a cure, but we did find a lot of dead soldiers. And files. No one was really interested in the stuff that wasn’t medical, so they let me take it.”

Tony let out a soft sound. “No one left? Damn. I was... I always said I’d go back, eventually, and never did. You took all his stuff?”

“The think tank?” Bucky asked, softly. “Is that where it was?”

“Your dad made all this shit?” She pulled down a roll-away from the ceiling; dozens of schematics were pasted on them. “That’s cool. You study with him, much? You were close?” She started rummaging around under one of the work tables and pulled out a heavy lock box. “When’s your birthday?”

“Close isn’t the word, but yeah, we worked together a lot. May 27, why?”

“People always used birthdays or anniversaries,” RiRi said. “For lock combinations. This was in his desk-- Stark’s, I mean. I never could get it open, and I wasn’t sure if destroying the lock itself would damage the interior. Had a hell of a time getting into his office to start with, the man locked and trapped _everything_. You’d think he’d invented the damn zombie virus to start with and didn’t want anyone finding it out.”

Tony chuckled. “Pretty sure that one can’t be blamed on him. It started overseas.”

RiRi punched in the code, scowled. “Mom’s birthday? Anniversary? Any other important date?”

Tony hummed, stepped forward and traced the edges of the box. It was familiar, the scratches in the paint and the dents in the metal. He touched the keypad, lightly brushing his fingers over the keys. Howard wouldn’t have used a family birthdate for his code; those dates were public record, or had been. Too easy to guess. But dates of significance...

Tony grimaced and punched in four digits. The lock clicked loudly as it disengaged. “The day Mom died,” he said softly.

Bucky put his hand on Tony’s wrist. “I’m sorry.” Tony had told him the tale when they were holed up in Valcor’s Island, talking in little halting bursts, tracing circles on Bucky’s skin around the zombie bite on his shoulder.

Tony flashed him a sad smile. “It was a long time ago. But Dad was never quite... right, after.”

“No, I imagine not,” Bucky said, shuddering. “I know how I’d feel, if-- something happened to you.” If Bucky had to put Tony down, after being infected? And knowing, knowing, just how close Howard had been to the cure, that would have been even worse. No, Bucky imagined he wouldn’t be quite right, either.

Tony took a breath and nodded at RiRi. “It’s your find. You open it.”

“Huh,” RiRi said, and she flipped a few photographs onto the table. “It’s you.”

They were pictures of Tony, clinical ones. He was maybe eight or nine in the picture, but the facial features were easily recognizable.

Tony picked one up and flipped it over. “Yeah, I got picked out a lot for trials, me and the other couple of kids in the place. Dad must have injected me with half a dozen things a year.”

“Hmph,” RiRi said, continuing to look through the box. “Vials, notes. What’s… Eureka mean?”

“It’s an old language from Before. Means something like _I’ve found it_.” Tony leaned closer. “What did he find?”

RiRi held up a note card with familiar handwriting on it, and below that were written two chemical formulas, and a case number.

Tony frowned and reached for the photos again, flipping through them quickly, checking the backs, until he found one with a matching case number on the back. “Well, whatever it is, it’s in me, or was. I wonder... This wouldn’t be too hard to synthesize, though it doesn’t look quite finished.”

RiRi took a stack of printed money from Before out of the box. “Well, this is useless. And maybe this as well. I don’t know anywhere that’s got working computers anymore.”

Tony’s head snapped around. “What is it? We’ve... We’ve actually got a computer that we scavenged. It works, if you can take the power draw.”

RiRi placed a pre-plague hard drive in Tony’s hand, something that looked like it might have been scavenged out of a laptop. Back when everyone had a computer, and information was networked and stored in devices like those. Back when Bucky was a child, and most of them held dirty pictures or first person shooter games. They’d taken some of Doom’s more functional machines with them, when they left. Just in case, Tony had said. 

In case what, Bucky wasn’t quite sure. Maybe he was clairvoyant.

“Back in my time, we played games off things like that. Usually-- shooting zombies,” Bucky said.

“Did it prepare you for the New World?” Tony wondered. He examined the connectors on the drive. “I think we can make this work,” he said excitedly. “Hold this--” He pushed the drive into Bucky’s hands and dashed for the door. “I’ll be right back!”

"You have a computer?" RiRi demanded. "Where'd you get something like that?"

"Guy named VonDoom," Bucky mused. "Funny. The zombie killing game was called _Doom_." It seemed like a bit of a coincidence to him, but… he felt a strange surge of hope go through him. Maybe… maybe Howard had found a cure after all, or at least a workable vaccine.

Tony came back several minutes later, VonDoom’s computer cradled in his arms. “Okay, you got some small screwdrivers?” he asked RiRi. He set the computer on a relatively free table and tipped it on end to examine the screws.

RiRi didn’t even bother to scoff, she just rolled her eyes and dumped a handful of tools on the table next to Tony. “You really think you can get this goin’ again?”

“If anyone can, it’s my Tony,” Bucky said, chest swelling with pride.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Tony said, reaching for a screwdriver. “I guess we’ll find out.” He started removing tiny screws from the back of the machine.

RiRi watched him for a moment, then threw up her hands. “I’ll just get the power cables, shall I? Call me Dominion Resources and Power.”

Bucky pulled up a stool, leaning against the worktable. “At least some of it makes sense to you,” he said. “I grew up with working power and computers and my solution if it didn’t work was to call my cousin and get her to walk me through it.”

* * *

Tony carefully lifted out the innards of the computer, considering all the points of connection, the delicate wires and circuits.

“ _You have to put the circuit board together exactly right,”_ Howard cautioned in his memory, “ _or nothing works right. You can get around faults in the drive, power supplies can be repaired, batteries and peripherals can all be replaced fairly easily. But the circuit board determines everything. And we don’t have many materials for making new ones left, so mind you’re careful.”_

At least he didn’t have to build a new circuit board this time. He found the drive and examined its connections to the board. There, there, and there. That connector would go... He pulled Howard’s old drive closer to examine it. Ah, there. And then that one. And the third... Right.

“ _There were a bunch of different kinds of computers floating around, Before,”_ Howard’s memory lectured. “ _But at their core, they’re all pretty similar. You can take the hard drive out of any one and connect it to pretty much any other hardware, if you know what you’re doing.” It was clear that Howard expected Tony to know what he was doing._

_Tony wasn’t sure why. Computers were delicate tech, fussy and temperamental. Maybe in the Before, they’d been useful tools, when a failing part could easily be replaced. But now, they were hardly worth the bother. Privately, he thought Howard was clinging to the old tech as a way of clinging to the past. To a time when Tony’s mom was still alive._

He was grateful for those lessons, now, though. One of the cables in VonDoom’s computer was a little differently shaped than the port on Howard’s old drive, so he dragged over a multimeter and started testing the pins. Re-stringing the cable would be awkward, but should work.

He muttered the numbers to himself, and the whole world shrank to the system in front of him, the spin of tools and metal and the hum of Howard’s voice in Tony’s memory. “All these years,” Tony muttered around the screwdriver in his teeth, “and you’re still taking me to school.”

"It's like watching my grams knit," RiRi said. "I have no idea what he's doing. Do you?"

"Kid, he's the brains in this pairing. I just shoot things and lift the heavy stuff."

“I’ll teach you later,” Tony promised absently. He wrapped the re-ordered cable with tape and carefully slid it into the waiting port. Yes!

He checked the other connections. None of the screw-down holes on Howard’s drive lined up with the holes in VonDoom’s machine, but that was okay, they wouldn’t be moving it once he’d gotten it reassembled.

“Okay, let’s get a monitor plugged in over here and see if we can read it, or if it’s just so much slag.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tisfan (3023) - K1: Epistolary  
> 27dragons (3033) - A3: FREE

A simple operating system popped up. The old Stark Industries logo spun around a few times before clearing to a plain black background with a few graphics that looked like boxes.

"No mouse?" Bucky wondered, then leaned over and pecked at the keyboard until the cursor was over one of the boxes and then hit the enter key. "This one's a video. I recognize the file format. Wanna watch it?"

“By all means,” Tony said. “Let’s see what wisdom dear old Dad left behind for us in these troubled times.” He didn’t expect any of the files to be groundbreaking, but he couldn’t deny a certain morbid curiosity.

Howard didn't look much different from the last time Tony saw him. His hair was a little more grey, the crow's feet deeper around his eyes. 

"I thought I had it, so many times, and I never did," Howard said. "And now, I'm so close, but I think…"

"Tony. You’re too young to understand this right now, so I thought I would put it on film for you. I made all this for you. And someday you’ll realise that it represents a whole lot more than just people’s hopes. It represents my life’s work. This is the key to the future. To life. I’m limited by the technology of my time, but one day you’ll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is and always will be my greatest creation is you."

Tony scoffed. “The technology of your time, really? You pompous ass, how did you imagine I’d even _see_ this, with the computers all falling apart one by one?” He shook his head. “Pointless. What else is on the drive?”

Bucky tabbed through some more of the files, dates, old experiment log reports.

Howard popped back up on the screen halfway through one of them. “The virus acts faster than everything we’ve ever seen. A standard vaccine can’t even start to fend it off, you’d have to inject a victim immediately after the bite--” The version of Howard on the screen suddenly lost his shit completely, knocking the table over. “It didn’t work, goddammit, we gave it to her right after contact, within thirty minutes, there’s _no reason_ \--”

Tony winced and reached over to turn that video off. He’d seen that particular rant in person, more than once. There _was_ a reason that the counteragent hadn’t worked on his mother. Tony had unlocked that door with Bucky. He wondered how Howard would react to that. Maybe it was best that he didn’t know.

“The vaccine needs to be stronger,” Howard said, coughing once and recovering from his tantrum. “It needs to be-- it needs to be older. It needs to be bred inside a human host, and it needs to be there for _years_. We don’t have years, not us. But maybe, maybe you do, Tony.”

Tony froze. “Play that again,” he demanded.

“It needs to be bred inside a human host, and it needs to be there for _years_ \--”

“Son of a bitch,” Tony whispered. “Howard, you asshole. _I’m the cure?_ ”

“You’ve got the virus inside you?” RiRi jumped to an entirely different conclusion and took a few, cautionary steps backward. As if Tony was going to go feral all at once and start gnawing on limbs.

“You’ve been out there,” Bucky said. “For _years_. A single, seemingly unenhanced human. And he didn’t have the balls to _tell you_? Holy shit. What would have happened to the world if you died?”

“Almost have, a dozen times or more,” Tony said absently, unable to tear his eyes away from the image of his father’s face. “I expect the world would keep going as it’s been going, somehow.” He closed the video and pulled up the next file, a photograph of handwritten chemical equations, scrawled messily across a sheet of paper. Dosages and rates of growth and incubation times.

Tony skimmed over it. He didn’t understand it all, but he understood enough to know that this was _critical_. He pointed at RiRi. “Copy this down somewhere in case the computer dies. Make a lot of copies.” He looked up at Bucky. “How’s your aim with a bow?”

“I mean, I ain’t Clint Barton, but I’m not bad, why?” Bucky blinked a few times. “You want me to shoot something healthy?”

“No. I’m going to go have a long talk with Mr. Parker and give up a few vials of blood, and then I’m going to rig an injection system on the end of an arrow. We’ll shoot a zombie with it and see what happens.”

“Beats volunteering to get bit,” Bucky said, and glanced at RiRi for a moment, then added, “again.”

RiRi sidled toward her armor. “What the hell have you people been _doing?_ ”

“We’re not infected,” Tony promised. “Come back here and copy these equations. If it makes you feel better, I’ll take Bucky with me to Peter’s lab and you can lock the door behind us.”

“And wipe everything down with bleach! You are a lunatic. Get out of my lab, get out, get out.” RiRi was half laughing and half serious; panic and anxiety at war with her obvious relief that nothing had, in fact, happened to them. And a touch of hysterical disbelief. A cure, after all this time.

Or at least, the hope of one.

Tony took Bucky’s hand and twined their fingers together. “Come on, let’s go let our resident organic chemist poke holes in me.”

“This should be fun,” Bucky said. “At least it’s just us right now. Some of the larger villas, you might get someone tempted enough to try an’ drain all your blood, if they think it’ll work.”

“Yeah, let’s not spread the word just yet. We’ll need to know if it works. How it can be administered. Does it act as a preventative, a curative, or both? Lots of science to do.” Tony chewed on his lip. “I’m not sure how to test whether it’s a preventative without someone actually getting bitten, though. Which seems dicey. Also, I want to see if we can figure out a way to synthesize whatever it is without it requiring a human host to grow.”

“Dogs can get it,” Bucky pointed out. “Usually because they’re stupid and they bite the zombies, but maybe it would make a good test subject.”

“Hm, true. Better than sending you out to get bitten again,” Tony teased. “That’s for a future experiment, though. First, let’s see what, exactly, dear old Dad dumped in my bloodstream.” He pushed into the chem lab. “Parker! Front and center!”

Parker’s lab was covered in white-- stringy goo, for lack of a better description. “Oh, Mr. Stark! Bucky, hi! Come in.” He struggled to get out of some sort of bracelet contraption. “I was testing a new trap deployment system.”

Tony looked around at the goo. “Looks like you could use a few more tests.” He poked at the stuff with one finger. It was sticky. Sticky enough that Tony had trouble retrieving his hand. “Wow, that’s... strong.” He wiped his hand off on his pants. “Anyway! We need to get some blood samples and take a close look. You got any medical gear in here?”

“It dissolves in a few hours on its own, or I have a solvent,” Peter said. “Yes, I have lots, what do you need? Did you hurt yourself?”

“Nope, but it looks like I might be incubating something in my bloodstream, according to Dad’s old notes, and we want to see if he was for real about that, or just blowing smoke.”

Peter opened his mouth as if he was going to ask a hundred different questions, and then appeared to think better of it. “I’ll get my kit,” he said. “I hope you have big veins, I’m not really good at drawing blood.”

“Great.” Tony started rolling up his sleeve. “Let’s take several samples once you’re in there, then, so we don’t have to come back for more tomorrow.”

“What’s your blood type?” Peter asked, digging around in his kit. “Oh, nevermind, I’ll type it while I’m looking.” He came back with a length of tubing and some needles in a flat packet. “These were boiled, so they should be clean. Infections are bad. I’ll just get a drip set up. There’s a thermos of water and some dried apples and raisins in my desk there, if you could get them-- Mr. Stark’ll need it after giving blood.”

He wrapped a tourniquet around Tony’s arm. “It’s not going to be, you know, like green or anything, is it? Not that I can’t do the job, but I do like to know before, you know, alien slime comes out and I freak out.”

“Was there a store of bad sci-fi novels kept in the bunker?” Tony wondered. “My blood looks like everyone else’s.” He squeezed his hand into a fist, watching for the veins to pop up. “It won’t be interesting until we get it under a microscope. Maybe not even then, but we’ll see.”

“Zombies were once the subject of pulp novels,” Bucky said, leaning one hip against the wall. “And look at the world now.”

Peter narrowed his eyes, took a deep breath, and jabbed the needle into Tony’s arm. “Ha! Got it on the -- shit, connector, crap, I-- oh, there we go, okay, only lost a little bit.”

“How comforting,” Tony said drily. He watched the vials slowly fill. “Wonder how much we should use for the first trial.”

“I suppose that all depends what we’re going to do with it,” Peter said. “There, that’s eight vials, and if we want any more, I’ll need to do the dishes, so… that’ll be enough for now. Hold this, pressure on it, and bend your arm up while I look for a bandage.”

Tony folded his arm around the little wad of cloth. “Never mind about the bandage,” he said. “Prep a couple slides.”

“No bleeding on my microscope,” Peter cautioned. 

“I’ll look for the bandage,” Bucky volunteered. “You two geniuses figure out what you’re looking at.”

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for,” Peter complained, smearing blood onto a rectangle of glass.

“I know,” Tony said. “I want you to come at this without any preconceived notions. Just... take a look, and tell me what you see, there.”

“I’m a chemist, not a biologist,” Peter groused, then peered in through the scope, messing with the dials.

“Luckily, everything is made up of chemicals!” Tony said cheerfully, though his stomach twisted in knots as he waited, wondering if their hope would die before it even got off the ground.

“Mr. Stark-- what are these? You’ve got… I mean, they look like white blood cells, only _larger_. They’re not-- let me focus here, they’re not leukemia cells, but--” Peter pulled the scope back up a little. “I’m going to seperate a few of them, see what’s inside.” He messed with the slide a bit, holding up a hand when Tony opened his mouth to say something. “Just wait, I’m looking.”

Tony grinned at Bucky. “He gets that from my side of the family.”

“Are these antibodies?” Peter demanded. “To _what_?” And then he went pale. “Oh. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, crap.”

“Those brains, too,” Tony told Bucky, and turned back to Peter. “Yeah. Well, maybe. Hopefully. We’re going to test it out.” He eyed the goo still hanging from the ceiling. “We might be able to use this, too.”

Peter swallowed hard. “I-- do you think it’ll work?”

“Honestly? I haven’t the slightest idea. But Dad apparently came up with this around the same time he perfected a counteragent--” Without ever knowing that it _could_ work, and that was a damned shame. “--so there might be something to it. Just might. We’ll need to do some thorough testing.”

Peter glanced up at them again, chewing his lip. “Yeah, that’s… going to be interesting.”

“Relax, kid,” Bucky said. “That’s my part of the job.”

* * *

Bucky had done a hundred stupid things in his life, probably a hundred a year, to be honest.

But hunting down a zombie to _not_ kill it seemed like it was going to top his list for dumb-ass shit. Jokes about bows aside, RiRi and Tony put their heads together and ended up rigging a tranquilizer pistol with a dose of -- hopefully -- zombie antigens. 

There were any number of possible outcomes, Bucky thought. The first, and honestly, most likely? He’d piss off the zombie and have to put it down with prejudice. But, and it was a big but, if he did at least find one, they’d have samples of its blood and tissue to work with. Gross. And highly dangerous, but-- well, probably not until they reached the _Avenger_ , where they had better lab facilities. But a smear or two of zombie blood that they could test different strengths of the antigens would give them some data. Maybe.

“All right,” Bucky said, checking the ground. The bunker had held, among other treasures, a shortwave two-way radio system. “I’ve got fresh sign here. Set off the noisemakers and get out of there, see if we can’t herd us a zombie into a trap. Copy that?”

“I hear you,” Tony said. “Noisemakers in three... two... one...” A sharp popping sound filled the air, loud even at this distance. As the sound faded, Bucky could hear voices, too far away to make out words, but he picked out Tony’s voice easily. Probably shooing his “assistants” back into the bunker.

Bucky scanned the area, waiting. Zombies hunted by smell and sound, mostly. Gunfire, it seemed, had always been something they recognized as a food-source noise. One… there-- a stirring of cloth, and then the creature pulled itself out of an old, rusted car. The zombies went dormant when they weren’t hunting, or swarming. It wasn’t like they had any forms of entertainment, Bucky thought.

And a second one joined the first.

The second one was fresher, not nearly as rotted. That one, Bucky decided, checking the zombie for injuries that would incapacitate an actual person. It seemed cruel -- if the cure worked at all -- to bring someone back from the horrors of the virus only to have them die because they were missing most of their stomach, part of an arm, and one eye. He didn’t even want to think about that.

The fresher one had a livid purple bite mark on one arm and scratches across her face. Someone who’d almost gotten away. And hadn’t been infected for too long.

“Got two coming in, I’ll try to tag them both, just to make sure, but net up the one in the yellow shirt, if you can,” Bucky said on the two-way and then stuffed it in his pocket and gave chase.

That was a new thing. Chasing a damn zombie, who knew that would ever happen. Usually it was run away and try to kill them while running.

“Yellow shirt,” Tony confirmed. “Be safe. We can always try again later if we miss.” He’d said the same thing before they’d parted ways for this strange hunt. Far more worried, as usual, about Bucky than himself.

Bucky pulled his mask up; his armor wasn’t nearly as impregnable as RiRi’s, but it was a hell of a lot lighter. _Bitch, I’m a Nomad. We don’t_ stay safe.

Bucky didn’t need to catch the zombies in order to shoot them. He needed to catch them after they were shot so the brainiacs could observe any reactions to the injections.

He gained on them; Christ, they were moving fast, they must be both hungry and fresh. 

Bucky spotted the markers that Peter had put up. Drew the tranquilizer gun. The zombies turned on him as soon as he entered the clearing; a living, moving human was a lot more interesting than mere _noise_.

One, two.

The pistol made soft _paff_ sounds as the darts were propelled forward -- the gun did not have a comfortable shooting range, honestly, which is why--

He leaped, grabbing one of the handles for the counterweights, dropped the pistol, and cut the rope, zipping himself up into the trees and out of range.

“Now, Tony!”

_Zwiff! Zwiff!_ Peter’s goo-launcher was quieter than the pistol, but effective. The thready stuff splattered over the zombies’ backs. They didn’t react, just kept shuffling forward -- until the goo bound their legs and they toppled over. They tried to get back up, but the more they moved, the more they got tangled in the goo. It was like watching flies try to fight free of a spider’s web.

Tony came out from his hiding spot, cautiously approaching the thrashing zombies. They weren’t faking their lack of mobility -- zombies didn’t have it in them to fake anything -- but it was always best to be careful in case one of them managed to break free. Mama Cat prowled at Tony’s side, growling and puffing out her fur at the zombies. Tony stopped a couple of body lengths away, taking careful aim with the goo-shooter, and shot more goo, this time covering the zombies’ faces. They didn’t need to breathe, and that would keep them from biting.

“Got ‘em!” Tony called, waving up into the tree where Bucky was waiting.

“As far as I can tell,” Bucky said, climbing down the hard way, “those are all we got left in the nearby vicinity. The swarm took the rest of ‘em. I’d guess that one was turned right after they left, and this one-- a survivor, maybe. She doesn't look more than a week out or so. Poor thing.”

“Yeah, that sucks a lot.” Tony pulled a set of thick gloves from his belt and tugged them on. They reached all the way up to his elbow. “Keep an eye on them while I take the first set of samples.”

“Keep an eye on them,” Bucky muttered. “Do I look like the undead whisperer to you?” It was hard to keep from being sarcastic; he’d trained his whole life to kill the fucking things and now the love of his life was playing doctor with them?

It would -- it could -- be worth it. But the whole thing made him very nervous.

Predictably, the zombies thrashed harder, the closer Tony got, trying to get to him, to bite him, to _eat_ him. Mama Cat hissed and yowled, echoing Bucky’s unease. But the goo held, and all they could do was squirm in those bonds. Tony drew fluid samples -- you couldn’t really call it blood, though the fresher one’s veins still yielded red -- and small tissue samples, then he danced back out of reach. “Okay, let’s secure them, and we’ll see what happens.”

RiRi had put together a couple of metal cages, heavy and awkward, but solid enough, and hopefully strong enough to hold a zombie for a few hours, at least. Parker’d made some sort of spray coating for their gloves, so they could handle the goo without sticking to it -- Bucky would be impressed, if it wasn’t so damn hard to hold something when the normal laws of physics weren’t applicable.

He dragged the two zombies into the cages, one in each, so they didn’t contaminate the experiment by hurting each other in their frenzy to escape.

“Okay, let’s get these samples to the lab and see if anything good is happening in there.” Tony patted the pouch on his belt where he’d stashed them. “We’ll come back and check on them in a couple of hours.”

Bucky couldn’t stop staring at them, as if he was waiting for something to happen, for them to-- _to what, exactly, Barnes,_ he demanded of himself. To just, be cured? Even becoming a zombie took between twenty-four and forty-eight hours of infection before exhibiting any signs.

Tony’s arm wrapped around Bucky’s waist. “Come on, honey,” he said gently. “It’s too soon for anything--”

One of the zombies _whimpered_.

Tony spun around. The newer one, the woman in the yellow shirt, had gone mostly still, curled up like a frightened child, and was letting out a soft moan of distress with every breath.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Bucky said, but he was already reaching for the solvent. “Should I spray her? Get her out of that?”

“Free her face,” Tony said, his eyes locked on her. “So she can breathe better. Even if the virus is receding, she’s probably still contagious, so don’t get too close, yet.”

The spray worked, remarkably quickly, leaving the woman, the zombie, the -- jesus, what even was she, now? -- covered in sticky slime, but she could breathe and they could see her face.

“Hey, hey there,” Bucky said, nonsensically. “Can you… can you hear us? Do you understand?”

“Get back, get back!” she gasped, her eyes squeezed tight shut. “I've been bitten, I've been-- Oh, god, oh god, shoot me, please, I don’t want to turn...”

“I will,” Bucky said, quietly, squatting near the cage, just out of reach. “My name’s Bucky Barnes. I’m a Nomad. I promise you, I will kill you if you start to turn. Okay? You believe me?”

“Just kill me now,” she sobbed. “It’s coming, I can feel it.”

“Hey-- I know how you feel, I do. But-- we’ve been making some progress. With a cure, okay? We dosed you with it, you feel that dart, it’s sticking out of your shoulder. Reach up, you feel that? You might not-- what’s your name, ma’am?”

“Wanda,” she sniffed. She fumbled at her shoulder, felt the dart. Pulled it free, and finally opened her eyes to look at it. Her gaze shifted upward, looking at the metal grid of the cage, and some of the tension eased out of her. “Was I... Was I already... There’s no cure for the virus.”

Keeping Tony’s warning in mind, he stayed out of her range, but he unbuttoned his shirt, peeling it back to show off the scar on his shoulder. “Yeah, there is. Now.” He swallowed hard. “We think you’re gonna come back to us, Miss Wanda.”

“I can... I can still feel it in me,” she said.

“It’ll take some time for the cure to clean it all out of you,” Tony put in. “We may have to give you another dose. We’re not sure. It’s still in testing. We’re going to have to keep you confined until we’re sure it’s done, but if there’s something we can bring you to make you more comfortable, just say so.”

“You won’t...” Wanda’s eyes flicked between Bucky and Tony. “You won’t let it take me back? If it... if I start to turn again?”

“I promise,” Bucky said, knowing that he could keep no such promise. They might need a freshly infected person to test their cures on. But he would do what he could. Keep her comfortable and hopefully from being too frightened. “We won’t let you hurt anyone.”

“Okay. Okay, I...” She blinked and looked at them again. “I think I’m... I think I’m hungry.”

“I’ll bring you something to eat,” Bucky said. “Sorry about the accommodations, but we don’t know if you’re still infected. We’ll give you some time in quarantine, just like you were coming to a new villa, okay?” He glanced back at Tony. “Quarantine’s not so bad, sometimes.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tisfan (3023) - February adopted: Next Generation  
> 27dragons (3033) - S5 Iron Dad

“It doesn’t work fast enough to waste it,” Peter pointed out. “Yeah, I mean, sure, it kills the zombies that are too decomposed to come back to anything remotely resembling normal, and I think we should all take a moment to thank our fucking makers for that--”

The fireside conversations had become a thing during the winter. Tony and Bucky got together once a week with all the kids to address issues. Whoever wanted to participate could do so, bring up ideas, discuss problems. Whatever shortages and supply issues were often covered. 

That day, the topic had turned to their zombie cure.

“Peter, don’t swear,” MJ said. “It makes you sound like a twelve year old trying to pretend to be cool. Which, no never mind, that’s exactly what you are. Carry on.”

“But it’s not a defensive tactic,” Tony wrapped it up. “Also, I can only make blood so fast. We need to find a way to synthesize it, or at least find a different host. Pigs, maybe? Bleed them at butchering and package it up instead of washing it away.”

“We’re already butchering them for the insulin, so I suppose we could, in fact, go back to actually _raising_ them instead of sending out hunting parties when we want a bacon burger,” Peter said. “We can try. As it is, I don’t really want to waste what we’ve got left. You get to hunt us down a mating pair, though. Pigs are stupidly huge, and I’m man enough to admit I’m scared of them.”

MJ snorted hard enough she almost fell out of her chair.

“I was thinking of dumping the whole problem in the Nomads’ laps,” Tony countered. “And then trying to find homes for you guys. Not that you’re not doing a great job here as it is, but... Community is good.”

“We have _community_ ,” Ned said. One of Peter’s friends, Ned was insanely practical, where a lot of the other New Albany survivors were somehow convinced that they were invincible. “And if we go off to Nomad-land, we’re back to being kids again. No one’s going to respect us. Or listen to us. Like we’re just idiots who have to be hand-fed everything and locked in the house.”

“What’s a communini?” Kobik asked. She was always where she shouldn’t be, and right now, that was climbing up the back of Bucky’s chair to drape herself over Bucky’s shoulder precariously.

“A bunch of people living together,” Bucky said. “More than a family, less than a villa.”

“Ideally, the older people can teach the younger ones what they know,” Tony added, “and the younger people can expand on that knowledge instead of having to start from scratch.”

“And, you know, it’s probably good if someone breaks an arm, or needs stitches, to have an adult around,” Bucky added. “Besides, you guys get to be heroes. We wouldn’t even have known the possibility for a cure existed, much less have one, if it weren’t for all of you. So, good job there.”

“And I’m not about to disrespect a single one of you,” Tony put in. “I’m incredibly impressed with what you’ve done.”

Kobik didn’t quite dive off Bucky’s shoulder to land on the floor instead of in Tony’s lap, but only because Bucky was quick. “You can jus’ ‘dopt us all. If the other communini don’t respect us, they can argue with Bucky-dad an’ Tony-dad about it.”

Tony was surprised at how much he suddenly _wanted that_ , to call these clever, brave children his own, to watch them grow and blossom into the world’s new hope. “Yes, well,” he said, clearing his throat and glancing at Bucky. “First step is to get us all to the coast.”

“We literally just got married like half a year ago,” Bucky said. “And now you’re going to make a family man out of me? I’ll be the first Nomad to have-- what, seventeen children? Pretty cool.”

“Yeah?” Tony smiled. “Well, maybe not quite that many. Some of them may decide they’d rather stay with other families. Or none at all, maybe, the older ones.” He nodded toward the teens, RiRi and MJ and Ned and Peter. “But if you’re willing... yeah, I’d like that.” He tucked Kobik up against his chest, resting his chin on her head.

“Someone will have to, at least, and it might as well be us,” Bucky said, but he was grinning, even as he snatched Kobik back out of Tony’s lap. “This one, though, this one is all mine. And-- it’s bed time for you.” He slung her over his shoulder. “We should start planning to go, as soon as the weather breaks. Late spring is prone to flooding, so we won’t have a very long window to get out of the north. Not with this many.”

Tony nodded. “You put the package to bed, and I’ll organize a confab with the villa elders, here, and start the planning.”

Bucky bounced Kobik on his back. “Squirmy package.” He leaned down and kissed Tony, not thoroughly and slow, but with just enough passion to get a chorus of disgusted noises from the teens. “I’ll see you there, after she’s tucked in.”

Tony started firing questions: what needed to travel, what supplies they had, what could be safely stored for them to come back to later. The younger kids got bored quickly and left to pursue their own interests. By the time Bucky came back, it was down to just Tony and the teens, and Tony was deep in discussion with MJ about the feasibility of carrying enough food for all of them versus hunting along the way.

“I see we have quite a capable quartermaster here,” Bucky noted. “Might try building a few more wagons. We’re going to move slow enough, no doubt about it, but wagons will be defensible, and the little ones won’t be able to walk the whole way. And I, for one, don’t want to carry Kobik down most of the eastern seaboard.”

“As if you’d even notice the weight,” Tony scoffed, but he pulled out a writing board and started sketching out designs for another wagon.

Ned leaned in to contribute some suggestions based on the supplies that were already available, and had a couple of ideas about how to fit the wheels so they’d be sturdier going over rough ground. Tony was impressed.

“And we’ll need weapons,” Bucky added. “As many as we can easily carry, and everyone over thirteen will need to learn to use them. It won’t take long before the scent of this many people pulls a swarm toward us. We have to be prepared for that. And as many doses of the antidote as we can make.”

Tony glanced at Peter, who wobbled his hand. “We’re still working out how big a dose needs to be,” he said. “And whether the age of the zombie matters. If they’re too far gone to save, though, we shouldn’t waste it on them.”

“Agreed,” Tony said. “As the current sole source of the antigen, let’s not bleed me dry. Literally.” He looked back at Bucky. “What about Wanda? Do you think she’ll want to come?”

Bucky shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “She’s an odd one.” They weren’t sure if some vague memory remained for the young woman. Or it could have been more normal sorts of trauma. Her brother, she told them, had died in the swarm, and she was often moody, or desolate. “I think she will. No one really wants to be alone. Not--” He waved a hand around to indicate the world in general.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “I’ll talk to her once we’ve got a more solid plan.” They’d brought Wanda into the bunker as soon as she’d passed quarantine -- the cats had turned out to be an excellent judge of the amount of the virus remaining in her system -- but she spent most of her time alone in the little room she’d been given. She occasionally ghosted out for meals, and pitched in on the chores without complaint, but she never joined the weekly gatherings.

Bucky nodded. “All right then. It’ll… it’ll be a long trip. We’ll want to be ready for it.”

“We will be,” Tony promised. 

* * *

Bucky waited until it grew dark, no trace of the sun still lingered on the waves. He wanted to make sure they were seen. The flares, wrapped lovingly in waxed cloth at the very bottom of his pack, would show up against the sky like a comet.

The kids had dug a firepit on the beach and MJ had liberated a tiny guitar -- a ukulele, Tony had corrected him, laughing -- from the ruins of an old shop, and was playing some of those old songs. Some of them were nursery rhymes, sung to Bucky when Bucky was a child, and his mother before that, and so on. Others were songs from the very end of civilization, things that had been on the radio before the outbreak.

Taylor Swift, Hozier, and Ed Sheeran. That sort of thing.

Bucky shook his head. “Ready?”

Because once Bucky summoned the _Avenger_ ’s longboats, everything was going to change. Again.

As long as Bucky had been alive, change was something he was used to. And something he sometimes hated.

Sometimes it was good, though. Tony had brought change, and it had all been for the best.

Tony smiled at him. “We’re ready,” he promised. He’d scavenged wire along the way and built a much bigger perimeter fence, powering it with one of RiRi’s arc reactors. He’d set it up while the kids were digging the pit. Even if the flares drew less welcome attention, they were prepared. “Light ‘em up.”

Kobik slipped her little hand into Bucky’s, utterly unafraid. “Ready,” she echoed.

Bucky set the lighter to the fuses and stepped back. A crackle of sparks, a hiss, and then the rocket zipped off the launcher and into the sky, where it exploded in a cascade of green flashes of light and smoke.

“Back in my day, we used to light off whole fields of these, for holiday. Light up the sky with noise and fire,” Bucky said. Sometimes, he felt very, very old. But Kobik was swinging off his arm and laughing and pointing at the flares. There was something about these kids, these bright sparks of humanity, that made Bucky feel young again. He put his free arm around Tony’s shoulder and drew him in closer.

“Won’t take long for them to come out,” Bucky said. “Although it might take a few trips to get us all aboard. They won’t be expecting a crowd. Just one lone Nomad.”

“We’ll take them by storm,” Tony joked, leaning into Bucky’s side. “Us and our kids.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of this one!
> 
> Stay tuned -- on Thursday, we'll start _Mail Order Bucky_ , featuring Muscovite siblings Bucky and Natasha, a cheesy "mail-order bride" website, and a somewhat confused Tony.

**Author's Note:**

> We swear, when we wrote this, the COVID-19 coronavirus wasn’t even a thing yet.


End file.
